Tales Of The Ubermensch: The Series - A TOTU: Hack dot World Fanfic
by Gamera Obscura
Summary: Based on the viral internet sensation that is Tales of the Ubermensch: Hack.World. Marcus is forced to date Delilah, the titular Übermensch of Nietzsche's philosophy, as she dispenses her version of justice, all while the world trembles as her control spreads throughout the population, and a task force upon whom Death Note is based hunts her persona of The Killer. (Loreblind OK)
1. Stave 1: Father's Day

**[Disclaimer: While the original author of "Tales of the Ubermensch: Hack - dot - World" maintains with absolute assurance that the character of Delilah Hanson ("The Killer," and the Übermensch), is based on a real and terrifyingly dangerous person, and some elements of this story are rooted in what are stated as true events in his book, this story is a work of fiction.]**

 **[To read more about allegedly real tales of the real Übermensch, please visit the following website:]**

 **[www talesoftheubermensch com, home of the free ebook "Tales of the Ubermensch: Hack - dot - World".]**

 **Tales of the Übermensch: The Series**  
 **Stave 1: Father's Day**

 **Prologue**

It is September 12th, 2003.

I am 32 years old. My name is Marcus.

I am sitting at my dining room table in complete stillness as a woman stands to my right. She speaks softly into my right ear. My eyes are closed. Her name is Delilah Hanson, and she has been my lover for four months. Delilah is approximately 5′2″ tall, and around 300 pounds. She is not the type of person I would ordinarily choose to be with, but as I listen to her words in the panicked darkness, I know the truth. I am not with her of my own free will. In fact, I am not with her at all. She is with _me_.

She is a monster. A master of subversion of the human mind. I am merely her latest victim.

I suspect she enjoys these little games she plays with me. I live a double life because of her. In one life, I am a successful IT professional. I like Japanese anime. I'm into rough sex and kinky roleplay. I have a cat. I drive a nice car and have a lot of expensive toys in my apartment. I believe myself to be a good, honest person.

I am deluding myself.

The other life I lead is like a skipping stone across the still waters of a pond. Every time the stone skims the surface of the water, I am allowed to remember what is really happening to me. All my horrified memories come rushing back, and I know that I have welcomed something incomprehensibly evil into my life. Sometimes I know her as "The Killer". On nights like tonight, I am allowed to know that "The Killer" is merely a mask that she wears. She calls herself "The Übermensch," and has declared that she is the fulfillment of Friedrich Nietzsche's prophecy of a Nihilist messiah. She has declared herself the God of a new world.

When this session is over, she will make me forget again, as she has for all of our previous sessions. I will continue on in my "normal" life, oblivious to the fact that anything is wrong.

The stone sails through the air, never knowing when it will touch the water again.

"Delilah" wields hypnosis like a weapon of mass destruction. Already, she controls countless people, and won't rest until she controls everyone in the world. She has proven this to me and to me alone, by foretelling the future in these brief, heart-freezing sessions. I can do nothing but listen with my eyes closed as she goes on.

She tells me that soon Gray Davis will be recalled as Governor of California; he will be replaced by action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Later, a man named Gary Ridgeway will confess to being the Green River Killer as part of a plea agreement, and will admit to murdering 48 women. He will receive a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Later still, Saddam Hussein will be captured in Tikrit, Iraq. He will be convicted of crimes against his own people and hanged.

Singer Elliott Smith will commit suicide by stabbing himself in the chest. A determination will never be made as to whether or not he was murdered.

Singer and notable eccentric Michael Jackson will be indicted by a grand jury for child molestation, but will later be acquitted. In six years he will be dead of an apparent drug overdose on the eve of a worldwide comeback tour over two years in preparation.

Massachusetts will legalize same-sex marriage.

President George W. Bush will be re-elected to a second term.

My glimpse into the future ends there.

In the darkness, I feel the floor moving underneath my chair. I hear the sound of a chair being placed next to me, and the wood creaks as Delilah sits down.

I know what comes next. The Übermensch wants to reveal more of her greatness to me. I do not know why she tells me the future, but the next time she and I meet, whether I am confronted by messiah or murderer, vengeful god or gleeful devil, I will remember these events, and some of them will have already come to pass.

For now, it is story time.

I feel her breath against my skin as she begins to tell me of a man named John Forsyth.

 **O-O-O**

Your name is John Forsyth. You are 29 years old.

Your name is John Forsyth, and you are a fit, attractive man who works as a litigator in downtown Chicago. You live in a million dollar townhouse on the Gold Coast with a tenant that rents a room. His name is Jim and he works as an international airline pilot for Singapore Airlines, leaving you alone most of the time.

That's fine with you. It gives you freedom and privacy to indulge in your only drug: a constant, intoxicating parade of women you pick up in nightclubs, fuck once, and then discard like so much toilet paper.

The sex is good, and you're a good lover, but truth be told, it's not the fucking that's the best part. It's the fact that they want more of you. They want to date you; you are a "catch", after all.

But they can't have you. No one can.

Your greatest rush comes from telling a beautiful hopeful that you aren't interested in a repeat performance. Watching their crestfallen, confused faces is almost enough to make you come in your pants.

Sometimes, you give them a phony telephone number instead. You enjoy the irony of giving out the number for a lesbian bar in Lakeview called "Meow Mix". It's enough to brighten your whole day.

Every few months, you call Meow Mix and say, "This is John Forsyth, are there any messages for me?" just so you can roar with laughter as the owner screams at you for being such an asshole.

 **O-O-O**

It is February 23rd, 1997. It is 5:57PM.

You are sipping a cup of coffee in your office, glancing over an amicus brief, when your boss, a friendly, frighteningly brilliant man named Rob, knocks on your open door.

"Yeah, Rob. Come in."

Rob is holding a microcassette recorder with a pair of headphones attached to it by a thin wire. He closes the door.

"John, you have to hear this. It's from Michelle's trial today. Her client pulled the rug out from underneath her on cross; McDaniel v. Swindon is completely fucked now."

You reach for the recorder and unplug the headphones. Rob waves you off.

"No, with the headphones. I don't want the secretaries or paralegals hearing; this is how ugly rumors get started, and Michelle may be facing an ethics investigation. Guess who has to brief the partners in the morning?"

You shrug, and plug the headphones back in. You slip them on, and press play.

A thrumming sound fills your ears. You are confused for a moment as your jaw drops open. Your eyes glaze as the sound ramps up into the ultrasonic.

A woman's voice begins speaking to you through the headphones. A blank expression on your face, you listen without awareness for exactly thirty minutes. The last instruction on the tape is for you to turn off the recording, which you do immediately and without thought.

"Take off the headphones and hand me back the recorder." Rob's voice is casual.

You comply.

"Now, bring up your Microsoft Mail." He instructs you to send a blank email to a certain email address. Almost instantly, an email is received in reply, a serial number is included as a subject line. Rob instructs you to read the number carefully, then open and read the message.

It takes you almost fifteen minutes. When you are finished, you spend seven minutes composing a reply before deleting all evidence of the emails from your system. Rob slips out quietly, taking his microcassette recorder with him.

After a minute or so you blink, believing you've merely zoned out. After checking your watch, you decide that you've done enough for today and go home. All memory of Michelle's disastrous cross-examination, indeed, even the barest whiff of Rob's visit has been wiped from your memory.

As you sit in the back of a taxi on your way home, something inside of you is screaming and crying. You are no longer a man, you are a slave. You have become a drone in the Human Hive.

And your subconscious mind is bleeding from the violation.

 **O-O-O**

It is April 29th, and you are sitting in a nightclub, Club Miranda, on Michigan Avenue. It's a bar for lawyers, and the gold diggers that often surround them. This is a prime hunting ground for you.

A woman approaches, and offers to buy you a drink. She says her name is Georgette, but all her friends call her George. She is absolutely stunning in a red minidress and seamed stockings. In fact, she is by far the most beautiful woman that has ever presented herself to you. The conversation is free and easy, and you find yourself, against all probability, warming to this woman. To your surprise and delight, she is a corporate attorney at a firm owned by Wells Fargo, a full partner at age 33, and being both alums of the University of Michigan School of Law, the two of you have a lot in common.

Two hours and four cocktails later, you kiss her in the back of a cab as you make your way back to her place. Her apartment is elegantly appointed, and, still in the marble and glass foyer, her dress quickly slides to the floor to reveal she wears La Perla beneath her clothes. The ensemble must cost nearly a thousand dollars.

"I love Italian lingerie," you tell her, kissing between her breasts. She unsnaps one garter, then the other, and leads you by the hand into the bedroom.

Once in bed, you can't seem to get enough of her. There is an emotional resonance between you, it seems, as your cock slides naked in and out of her delightful pussy, adorned as it is by the narrowest of landing strips. Her expertise in lovemaking is matched only by your own, and you come together, crying out each other's names in the darkness. There has been no discussion of diseases or pregnancy, only the need the two of you share for one another. Your bodies entwine in a beautiful world free of consequence.

One session leads to another, and to a third, then a fourth. You thrilled by this woman and her marvelous techniques. For the first time in as long as you can remember, you feel something for someone other than yourself, and this frightens you. Still, you are compelled to keep going, until nearly two in the morning, when you collapse in a heap and sleep until dawn.

You dress quickly in the lightening bedroom; you still have to go home, shower, and change. A deposition awaits you in three hours.

George crawls toward you in her king sized bed, the beauty of her naked form only enhanced by the brightening glow from outside. She asks for your number.

Without thinking, you hand over one of your business cards, which has your cell phone number printed on it. You want to see this woman again. You need more of what she can offer you.

Georgette doesn't call, so, still feeling horny, you make your way that night to Essex, a club on the Gold Coast, within walking distance of your home. You order a Dos Equis and seat yourself at the bar. Within ten minutes a woman in a skirt suit sidles up to you and smiles.

"Hi, I'm Janelle—"

"Janelle Swenson, from Channel 9 WGN," you finish, offering your hand with a grin. "I know exactly who you are, and I loved your piece on tort reform last month, even though I disagreed with it."

"Oh? Are you an attorney?"

Six hours later, Janelle is collecting her clothing from the floor, your business card in her hand, as you offer to call her a cab. The sex, like the night before, has been phenomenal, and you feel compelled to see her again. You wonder at the possibility of juggling two women at once; the prospect is alien to you, but wonderful and scary at the same time.

Another night, another club, another drop-dead gorgeous woman. The pattern continues.

 **O-O-O**

"I'm telling you, Rob, I think I've actually gotten better looking."

You are bragging to your boss. It has been thirty days of wonder, thirty women of exceptional beauty, and thirty nights of unfathomable passion. You tell him that amongst your conquests over the last month, you have bedded a TV presenter, four catalog models, three runway models, three feature dancers, and a fashion designer. The sex has been the best you have ever had in your life.

"Youth is wasted on the young," Rob says dismissively as the two of you sit in your office, the door closed. "I can't even get my wife to put out more than once a week. Twice, if I'm very lucky. I don't know how you have the stamina."

"I'm not tired at all," you reply. "In fact, I've never felt better in my life."

Of course, there's the troubling fact that despite giving out your real number on every occasion, despite feeling an affinity for each of them, not a single one of these women has called you back.

But hell, as long as the top-shelf pussy parade keeps throwing itself at your feet, you have no cause to complain.

That night, your winning streak ends, and you sleep alone.

You sleep alone the next night as well.

And the one after that. Despite going on the offensive and aggressively pursuing some of the women available to you in the clubs, no one responds. No one even nibbles.

Weeks drag by. Weeks and weeks and weeks. You begin to develop a complex over your lack of sex; six weeks is the longest you've ever gone without getting laid since you were fourteen years old.

Finally, in Club Sanctuary, you meet your rainmaker. She is not your normal type, but despite her 300 pound girth and simple clothing, her average appearance is mesmerizing to you. Impossibly, she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, and you know that you have to have her.

 **O-O-O**

Her name is Delilah Hanson, and she is a Director of Marketing Research for the Nielsen Corporation, which is an amazing accomplishment; she is only 24 years old. You sit across from her at a table, sipping a glass of exotic schwarzriesling, as Delilah drinks a fine merlot. You hang on her every word as you talk about Caribbean islands and German wineries. She laughs at your jokes, and is just as charming in return. You talk about your pre-law at Yale while she discusses her six years at the Wharton School of Business.

It is love at first sight for you. Real, desperate love. You've never met anyone like her. In the familiar surroundings of your bedroom, you undress her, kissing every beautiful part of her as you uncover it. Your mouth finds hers, and you plant tender kisses across her lips and down the side of her throat. She gasps as you tweak a nipple of her enormous breast with a thumb and forefinger.

She tells you that she is ready, but strangely, despite how much you want her, despite your blossoming love for her, you are not. No matter how much you will it, your cock will not stir.

"I think I need a minute."

And so she holds you to her breast, rocking you gently as you try to relax and clear your mind.

"Can I tell you a secret?" she asks.

Your eyes do not open as you rock against her, your right ear near her voluptuous lips. "Of course."

She smiles. "You're in a _lot_ of trouble, you stupid fuck."

Your eyes fly open as your whole body stiffens. She speaks a pair of words that don't belong together. To your horror, you cannot move.

"Close your eyes," she coos in your ear. You comply. "Oh, John, John, John... What am I going to do with you?"

Inside your mind, you scream for help. You scream in confusion and rage and fear. You see her corpulent form for what it is and feel terror at the subjugation of your will.

"You really are a piece of shit, do you know that? You destroy happiness wherever you go, John. You delight in damaging the lives and esteem of every woman you touch. You bring the promise of love, but only leave wounds behind." She continues rocking you against her breast. She chuckles.

"I'm here to tell you that there _will_ be a reckoning, John. I see you. I see you, and I am not pleased. In fact, I have something special planned for you." She tells you of a song that she has written for you. It is called "Pony Boy," and will be released on the next album by the Butthole Surfers. As she recites the lyrics, you listen in wonder and humiliation that someone has seen you so completely and incisively. In the silence of your inner monologue, you are weeping. She throws her head back and laughs. "Now eat my pussy, you selfish fucker!"

Delilah spreads her obese thighs and exposes her shaved slit for you; you begin to lap at her clit as a finger slips inside of her and curls upward, searching for her G-spot. She cries out in orgasm almost immediately, but you press on.

As she moans and gasps, she calls out a trigger phrase. You feel disoriented as the memories of what you have just experienced begin to fade. Something inside you tries desperately to hang on to them; you know that something is wrong, that you are in danger, that something impossible and horrible and evil is happening to you, but the memories evaporate like so much smoke.

And then there is only love. Love, and the tender flesh between your lips.

 **O-O-O**

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to perform. That's never happened before."

Delilah lies next to you, panting and heaving. "Oh, don't worry, you more than made up for it." She smiles.

You feel nervous and afraid of rejection. "So listen... I'd like to have another opportunity to try. I'd really like to see you again."

Still smiling, Delilah reaches for the nightstand, and writes her number on a pad of paper you keep by the telephone. "Call me tomorrow afternoon and we'll go to dinner. You can buy me a steak at Gibson's."

Your heart leaps in your chest. You kiss her, passionately.

 **O-O-O**

The next day crawls by. You can't think of anything but Delilah, it seems.

Finally, at 2:37, you can't stand it anymore and pick up the phone to call her. You dial the number she wrote. After a couple of rings, there is a click.

"Forsyth Exterminators, how may I help you?"

And your blood runs cold. You hang up the phone, devastated and shaking. A few minutes later, your telephone rings, causing you to jump in your chair. You answer it.

"I need to see you in my office, John." It is Rob.

Filled with dread, you walk the short distance to Rob's corner office. There are two middle aged men in the room with him, both wearing cheap suits. One is holding a stack of floppy diskettes.

The other one holds up a gold badge. "Mister Forsyth, I am Detective O'Dann of the Chicago Police Department. Please turn around and place your hands behind your back."

You look to your boss in shock. "Rob? What the fuck is this?"

"Mister Forsyth, if you do not turn around and place your hands behind your back, you will be charged with resisting arrest."

You comply. As the handcuffs are placed around your wrists, the other detective reads your Miranda rights from a small wallet card. When he finishes, Rob explains:

"Child pornography was found in your private directory by the IT service this morning, John. I'll arrange for bail and counsel through Swiss and Dunphy, but until or unless you are acquitted of these charges, please consider yourself terminated from Cannon, Myer, Briggs and Reynolds."

He won't even look you in the eye.

And so, for the first time in your life, you do the perp walk, past your secretary, past your colleagues, past fucking Michelle and that smug look on her fat, ugly face, God damn her.

It is a long, sleepless night in the holding tank. You stare down at your laceless shoes and think of the stinging irony of being on the receiving end of your own game. You had given Delilah your heart, and she had shit on you.

But it was more than that. The number she had given was for Forsyth Exterminators. That was more than mere coincidence. Didn't that have to mean that she knew exactly who you were before you met?

Yet it was _you_ who approached _her_.

Was it possible—could she have somehow framed you for this crime as well?

Something was very, very wrong.

In the morning you are arraigned and charged with 47 counts of possession of child pornography. Your counsel, an embarrassed looking woman from Swiss and Dunphy states her case that you are not a flight risk, bail is set, and you are freed.

Your personal property is returned in a large zipper bag.

Forty-five minutes later, you are home and collapse into an armchair. You open your bag of worldly possessions and retrieve your cell phone.

"You have twenty-six new messages."

"Jesus..." You're popular today.

"John, it's Georgette Swan. I'm calling to let you know that I went to see the doctor yesterday, and he's confirmed that I'm pregnant; I know it's yours, as I haven't been with anyone else in over three months. Please call me back so we can discuss this, but know that I am going to have this baby, and I am fully prepared to sue you for paternity if you won't do the right thing."

 _BEEP_

"John, it's Janelle Swenson. I'm... I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant, and I'm keeping it..."

 _BEEP_

"Hi, John, it's Tina Unger. We met at Balzac a couple of months ago. I'm calling to let you know that you got me pregnant that night, and I've decided that I'm going to have this child. Please call me..."

 _BEEP_

"John, this is Donna from Essex. Please call me as soon as possible. We have something important to discuss..."

 _BEEP_

"John, it's Barbara Bender..."

 _BEEP_

"John, I don't know if you remember me..."

 _BEEP_

"John, it's Alice from Club Staxx. We need to talk..."

 _BEEP_

 _BEEP_

 _BEEP_

 **O-O-O**

It is December 24th, 1998. It is 11:59PM.

Your name is John Forsyth. You are 31 years old.

Your name is John Forsyth, and the barrel of a gun is pressed against your right temple.

Your name is John Forsyth, and you are the father of twenty-nine children by twenty-four different mothers.

Janelle Swenson aborted when she learned of your child pornography charges; it seems that it is detrimental to a telejournalist's career to be linked to such people. Connie O'Dann, daughter of the detective that arrested you, miscarried during her second trimester.

You are the father of twenty-nine children you will never see due to the felony child pornography conviction that will hang over your head for the rest of your life.

Disbarred and disgraced, you pled guilty in exchange for a suspended sentence. That's all the justice that three attorneys and $150,000 will buy you these days; you didn't feel you had much of a choice but to take the deal, though: some of the images were of violence against the children being molested, and it would be all over if a jury saw them.

Today, you live in Rockford, in a shitty studio apartment in a bad part of town. You drive a fifteen year old Honda Accord you can barely afford to keep on the road. You make decent money as a freelance management consultant.

Decent for a sex offender and convicted felon, anyway.

But it seems that every spare penny you earn goes to pay court mandated child support. You resent them all, like vultures, devouring everything you have left.

Already, your looks are starting to fade. The stress of your experience has aged you; it doesn't matter, though, because you haven't had an erection in over a year and a half, not since before Delilah. You've tried this new medication called Viagra that is supposed to help with impotence, but it didn't make a lick of difference for you. The doctors say that your problem is psychological.

And so here you sit, in a ratty old chair you got from Goodwill, a gun pressed to your temple.

There is a gun pressed to your temple this night, because this morning, Delilah allowed you to remember.

Remember everything.

How you were subdued in your office, how you received instructions, precise and deadly, like computer code, via email over the next few weeks. How you were made to go to all those clubs and bed all those women, and how each of them was taking massive doses of fertility drugs, which explains the surprising number of twins and the triplets you sired.

How your life was systematically and utterly destroyed.

How you would never have an erection again, would never know the merciful touch of a woman.

How you would never be able to tell anyone any of this, ever.

How you were made to fall hopelessly in love with a monster.

A boom box sits on a table across from you. It has been playing the song "Pony Boy" on a continuous loop for hours. The cellophane from the CD wrapper flutters in the breeze from the heating vent. You close your eyes.

You pull the trigger, or try to, anyway. Nothing happens. Your finger will not move, no matter how much you will it to.

A voice speaks in your mind. Delilah's voice, implanted long ago.

{I'm sorry, John, but I just can't allow you to take the easy way out. You've been a sick, sick boy, and now it's time for you to take your medicine. Your punishment for attempting suicide is as follows...}

Inside your mind, you scream in horror.

Your name is John Forsyth, and you are drone number 542,913,648.

Your name is John Forsyth, and you have been judged by The Killer.


	2. Stave 2: Paranoia Agent

**[Disclaimer: While the original author of "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack - dot - World" maintains with absolute assurance that the character of Delilah Hanson ("The Killer," and the Übermensch), is based on a real and terrifyingly dangerous person, and some elements of this story are rooted in what are stated as true events in his book, this story is a work of fiction.]**

 **[To read more about allegedly real tales of the real Übermensch, please visit the following website:]**

 **[www talesoftheubermensch com, home of the free ebook "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack -dot- World".]**

 **[Trigger warnings for childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, animal cruelty and murder, torture, murder, and same-sex sexual content.]**

 **Tales of the Übermensch: The Series  
Stave 2: Paranoia Agent**

It is June, 2003. I am 32 years old.

My name is Marcus.

I am sitting in my car, alone, unable to move. Earlier in the evening, I had met Delilah Hanson (who was also a serial killer known mainly as "The Killer") for the first time, or so I had thought, ostensibly for a date. What had happened in the intervening hours was unclear, but much later, with the sun down, I am shaken and shouted back into consciousness in the front seat of my 2001 Toyota Solara, parked in a parking lot in some unrecognizable place, find my hands don't work right, and that I am extremely disoriented. Believing I am having a seizure, I demand the unknown woman in the car next to me call an ambulance. She soothes me and calms me down; she says if I will just relax, she will explain what has happened to me. She asks me to sit with my hands in my lap in such a way, with the seat reclined, that I will be comfortable to sit for ten minutes or longer without moving. Something in my mind screams: "trap!", but I comply.

She then asks if I can see the clock on my dashboard, and I tell her I can. Satisfied, she speaks a trigger phrase, and freezes my body except my eyes, my ability to blink, my ability to breathe, speak and swallow. I am terrified as I try to move, but say nothing.

"So," she asks. "What do you have to say for yourself, being a child molester and all?"

And there it was, the label I've been loathe to think, let alone speak, since I was ten years old and experimented by touching a two year old girl. I was so horrified by what I had done that the behavior had never been repeated, but a line had been crossed, and I was a monster, no two ways about it.

I try to buy time. "Oh my God… Oh my God… Oh my GOD!" I scream, trying to figure out how to get out of this.

"Marc… MARC! If you try my patience, this is going to go very, very badly for you." Delilah speaks simply but with a hint of exasperation. I bide my time, praying in my heart that I will survive the night.

Now I am sitting alone, unable to move for another thirty minutes after Delilah has left me, after which I will be able to move and simultaneously forget everything that has happened to me this evening. I begin to cry in earnest, and think of the girl I touched, because Delilah has promised to kill not just me, but her as well, for reasons I cannot begin to understand. I think of the religious cult I belonged to when the incident happened, back when I was just a boy, and I am stunned that a crime I swore I would take to my grave, my infraction forever unspoken, had come spiraling out of my past to destroy my life. The clock ticks another minute, and I wonder what I can do to protect myself.

But how am I to save myself from this evil if I am to be rendered unaware that it even exists?

 **O-O-O**

It is five months later, November, 2003. I am still 32 years old.

I am sitting in my apartment with the Delilah, all memory of my previous experience long forgotten, and we are in a relationship, a relationship that has been going on for over four months. After discussing Chuck Palahniuk's novel _Lullaby_ , she has come to me on a Sunday afternoon, and asked me to help her flesh out an idea I'd had the night before. The idea that with the power described in _Lullaby_ , the power to kill anyone in the world with a thought, one could take over the entire world and become a benevolent and anonymous dictator. I said that it was a brilliant idea for a novel or three, or even a movie. She had laughed at the irony that night, a development I have by now forgotten, and called me a fucking idiot for it. I had retaliated by ordering her out of my home, and she had responded by blackmailing me. The situation spiraled out of control, until she had finally revealed that she had been using and abusing me with hypnosis for months, at which point I tried to kill her as, at her triggering, I remembered screaming in my car as she talked in placid tones, but my arms failed to move, and I merely informed her that I had just tried to murder her.

Fifteen minutes later, I knelt in front of my toilet, a bowl full of her shit in front of me, and she threatened to kill everyone I knew and kill everyone in the city of Milwaukee with a nuclear weapon at a future date unless I ate everything in the bowl within fifteen minutes. I was unable to go through with it, despite the consequences, and instead begged her to make me. She promised that she would be happy to oblige me if I failed one of her tests or tried to kill her again, once she had done a little research and put some thought into the matter, for it was apparent that it was impossible to make someone do through hypnosis what it was otherwise unconscionable or taboo for them to do.

Now, all that forgotten except for my idea for a novel or movie script based on someone using the power described in _Lullaby_ to anonymously take over the world, and seated on the couch, she asks me to come up with a main character for my book or story. Would the character be male or female? I say that he should be male, like me, because I believed in writing what I know.

Her next question: would he be as smart as me? Less intelligent? Smarter? I say that he should be smart. Incredibly smart. If he's to be the architect of a new world, he'd have to be the most intelligent person who ever lived.

Then: "Wait, I've got it! He's the Übermensch!" Delilah laughs at this.

"Why is that funny?"

"I just like hearing the word Übermensch," she says.

"Übermensch, Übermensch, Übermensch!" I exclaim, and we both laugh out loud. What I don't realize is that we are playing out a script that she programmed into me the night before, while in bed. I don't even know what an Übermensch is, but this doesn't even occur to me at the time.

"Marcus, are _you_ the Übermensch?" she asks.

"Hell, no. I'm not nearly smart enough," I say.

"Am _I_ the Übermensch?" she asks.

"I doubt it."

"Why do you say that?" she asks me.

"Well, I can't say for certain that you're not, but you keep saying that I'm smarter than you are, and if I'm not smart enough to be the Übermensch, you certainly aren't."

"What would you say if I told you I _was_ the Übermensch?" she asks me.

"I'd tell you to get the hell off my couch."

She cocks her head at this. "Why?"

I ponder for a minute. "Because the Übermensch is supposed to save us all from ourselves. Well, I've seen the fucking news. If you _are_ the Übermensch, you've got a lot of fucking work to do!"

"Marcus," she says with a coy smile, "I _am_ the _Übermensch_!"

"Get the fuck off my couch," I say. "No, go on. Get up. Move. Get off my couch!" I berate her until she finally stands up, annoyed. "Go save us from ourselves."

Delilah goes into the kitchen for a minute and returns with a can of soda, which she pops open. "The Übermensch decided she wanted a Pepsi instead," she says as she sits back down.

We share a laugh. Hers is without mirth, and her eyes are cold and dead, something I've noted from time to time. Whenever she laughs, it never reaches her eyes.

Now, she wants to know, how does our killer kill?

"With a thought, just like in _Lullaby_."

"But we're trying to make this _different_ from _Lullaby!_ " she reminds me.

I think of _Lullaby_ , with its books and its grimoire, and the answer is obvious to me. "What if he has to write down their names in a special, magical book, like a Book of the Dead?" I say.

"And how does he keep from killing people with the same name?" she asks me.

"I suppose he would think of them while writing it, just like _Lullaby._ "

"Again, different from _Lullaby_ ," she reminds me. "What if he has to think of their faces?"

"Why their faces?" I ask.

"Because there would be some people he couldn't kill. He'd have to find out their faces or their names in order to kill them first. It all adds to suspense and tension, something that your book would be heavy on, and would certainly be in the suspense genre."

"I suppose that works," I concede.

"And how would they die?"

"I suppose something quick, like a heart attack or a stroke."

"Well, which is it? Reason it out," she says.

I consider for a moment. "Well, with a stroke, you're basically incapacitated immediately. With a heart attack, people have time to do things, to think things, to say things." The heart attack seemed like the winner, and I told her so.

"And what if he writes down a cause of death and have it happen?" she asks.

"Well, you just took my idea and make it a thousand times better!" I exclaim.

"So which is it? Heart attack or cause of death?" she asks.

"Well, how about if he writes down a cause of death it happens. If he just writes down a name, they die of a heart attack?"

It was perfect. My hero would kill off pundits that I disagreed with, and corrupt and obstructive politicians. Warlords and dictators would fall at my hand with the stroke of a pen in my books until war was a thing of the past, and freedom reigned around the world. Then, I would turn my attention towards religion, killing off the Pope and all the cardinals, and the new Pope and all the new cardinals, until no one would accept a position of leadership in the Catholic Church, and then move on to Islam and the imams and clerics, and on and on, killing off cults and major religions one by one until people gave up the fantasies of their faiths and learned that the only paradise they had to look forward to was the one we built here on Earth with their bare hands, just like Nietzsche prophesized that the Übermensch would do.

Except, before this conversation, I still didn't know what an Übermensch was.

Little did I know that Delilah already has plans to turn my idea into a manga, an anime TV series, a string of live action Japanese movies, and a Japanese live action television drama, all called _Death Note_ , which will become an international sensation. And they would all be about an antihero commonly called "Kira" by the people, which is Japanese for "The Killer".

Delilah then turns on the TV and turns the cable to a movie channel. I look at her quizzically. "Are we done?"

She triggers me into a suggestive state. "Yes, we're done here. You will sit and watch these movies until I return. If you need food or drink, you will get them and consume them. If you need to use the rest room, you will do it, and all the while as you are watching, you will imagine me with you. You will not answer your phone, or make any phone calls, you will just watch movies until I return. Do you understand?"

I smile. "Yes, I understand," I say, my eyes fixated on the TV screen.

"Good," she says, and looks out onto the darkening sky. "I will be back in a few hours, but as far as you are concerned, I am sitting next to you on the couch while I am gone. You will imagine us watching in silence." She stands up to leave, and walks out of the apartment.

 **O-O-O**

Your name is Shiho Wright, and you are 37 years old.

Your name is Shiho Wright, and you are crying after receiving one of your husband's gifts, your daily beating. Looking into a mirror, you try and hold back the tears as you apply cover makeup to the black eye he gave you the other day in the hopes that your "date", a woman you met online named Delilah, would not notice. Half-Japanese, your skin color is not quite right for the cover-stick you use, but it will have to do. You're thankful that your son is away at a friend's for a sleepover, otherwise Pete would never allow you to go out for the evening on your own.

You finish applying your makeup, dress yourself, and put on your coat. Pete calls from the other room. "Remember, 'ho, I want you back by nine, or I'll give you a beating that will make the one I just gave you seem like a first kiss."

A first kiss. You think back to the time you first met Pete and have to laugh. Sometimes you wonder why he doesn't just get it over with and simply kill you, but everything about this man, who was so charming and gentle and kind when you married him, mystifies you.

Less than an hour later, you are sitting across a somewhat attractive woman with straight, dark brown hair, grey eyes, and a rather thick build, as she was around 5'4" and over 300 pounds. You talk a little over drinks at the Brookfield Houlihan's, but you found that you aren't good company.

Delilah cocks her head. "Is it me, Shiho?" she asks.

You smile regretfully. "Not at all; you're very kind and sweet, but I'm afraid I have a lot of my mind."

Delilah nods, knowingly. "Does it have anything to do with that black eye you're trying to hide?" she looks a little wary, as though she is nervous to bring up the subject.

You pause, then sigh. "Yes. It's my husband. He beats me nearly every day."

Delilah looks shocked, although unbeknownst to you, with her network of workers feeding her information about everyone she deals with personally, none of this is a genuine surprise to her. "That's terrible! Have you thought about leaving him?"

You close your eyes, as if you are embarrassed by your answer. "He takes care of me financially. I've been a stay at home mother for sixteen years, I have no job skills, and can't provide for myself. Pete is very successful in his career, and I have a son to consider. He told me if I ever left, I'd never see my son again, and I have nowhere to go; my only remaining family is in Kyoto, and I haven't even met any of them."

Delilah reaches across the table and takes your hand in hers. "I want to be alone with you. I want to hold you, to let you know everything is going to be alright."

You blush, and know what she wants; she wants to make love to you. You are being offered a pity fuck, and that's the last thing you want, as much as you feel you need to be held, to be loved. But the real thing that gives you pause is the presence of bruises all over your body; you don't want Delilah to see the marks of what Pete has done to you. You're ashamed.

"I- I can't." You are on the brink of tears and your hand trembles in hers.

It's as if she can read your mind. "I know what you're trying to hide, just like you're trying to hide that black eye. Come with me. It will be alright."

You skip dinner.

 **O-O-O**

A half an hour later, the two of you are alone in the Brookfield Motel Six, and despite your protests, the lights stay on as Delilah removes your clothing, piece by piece. When she is finished, she has you lie down on the bed next to her, and begins to kiss your bruises, one by one, until your entire body is covered with her kisses, along with the red, purple and green of old and new abrasions and contusions. She kisses between your breasts, and laps briefly at each pierced nipple between kisses placed upon your soft but unharmed lips. Then she begins to kiss her way downward.

 **O-O-O**

Hours later, the two of you are spent, and you feel the warmth of Delilah's tender caresses and loving embrace. You look at your watch and suddenly panic. "I'm going to be late! I have to leave!"

Delilah holds you tighter and presses her lips against your ear. "It's going to be okay, Shiho. It's all going to be okay. I love you, and I want to make sure that you _will_ have justice." She speaks a pair of words that do not belong together, and your bodily suddenly stiffens. As your body relaxes and you close your eyes at her behest, Delilah begins to whisper softly in your ear.

 **O-O-O**

It is nearly eleven o'clock when you arrive home, half paralyzed in fear; Delilah had let you sleep, and now you are in big trouble. As you walk up the stairs of your split level ranch house and toward the living room, you hear a thud and a yelp from your dog. Terrified, you rush to investigate. Maromi's blood pools under her from a headwound, your husband Pete standing above him with your son's metal baseball bat in his hands. "I told you not to fuck with me, 'ho; I said to be back by nine tonight, or there would be consequences. Now you have no fucking dog, and we're not going to get another one. Fuck with me again, the same will happen to you."

He drops the bat and storms off to the den.

Once he is gone, you howl in rage and pain as you fall to your knees and cradle the small dog in your arms, getting blood all over yourself. The animal is quite clearly dead as you wail until a voice screams from the other room. "Shut the fuck up, 'ho, or I'll really give you something to cry about."

Something inside of your snaps.

You pick up the bat, dry your eyes, and walk slowly towards the den, the bat dragging along the ground behind you. You walk up to Pete and stand between him and the television.

Pete glares at you with exasperation. "Get the fuck out of my way, 'ho."

You glare back. "Shut the fuck up, you worthless piece of shit. And don't move."

Pete opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. He tries to move, but cannot lift his legs or arms, and cannot stand. It is clear from his expression that he is in a panic as you raise the bat above your head, and bring it crashing down into his right hand. The fingers are all a jumble of broken digits all pointing in the wrong directions, and the back of his hand and the fingers begin to swell and purple.

"I guess you won't be jerking off with that hand anytime soon; don't worry, though. I'll make sure the other one matches." You wind up and bring the slam it down on his left hand. Pete's mouth is open in a long, silent scream as his eyes fill with water and tears begins to stream down his clean-shaven cheeks. He writhes in his easy chair, but cannot move much beyond that, at your command. You should be confused at his inability to speak or move, let alone defend himself, but all of this seems completely natural to you at the time.

Next, you shatter the bones in one foot, then the other, hitting each twice for good measure. Then you break and bruise his forearms, then his upper arms, then the lower and upper legs, hitting each section of each leg a half a dozen times before breaking his kneecaps, then hitting him in the chest repeatedly, breaking several of his ribs in the process, if his ragged breathing is any indication.

You're crying openly as you do all this, the pain and fury of fifteen years of torment pouring out of you as you weep while you take this monster apart piece by piece. You're grunting and groaning with each hit, and bawling your eyes out in between.

Then you hit him squarely in the crotch with the yellow metal bat, and a small squeak actually escapes his lips this time, amid his ragged and heavy breathing and the terror in his eyes.

You stifle a laugh at the noise, then bring the bat over your head again. "Say goodbye, Peter."

Pete doesn't hesitate, and does what he's told. "Goodbye," he croaks and then wheezes again.

And with that, you bring the bat down savagely upon the crown of his head, and his eyes go dim, his mouth hanging open lazily. You wind up again and again, and bring the bat down on his head until his skull splits open, spraying his brain all over the den and flecking your arms and torso with blood and grey matter. When you've finally had enough, you drop the bat to the ground with a clatter, and sink to your knees again. Your palms hit the floor and you weep and weep, everything spilling out of you, and you feel an intense satisfaction, wishing that you had done this over a decade ago.

You crawl across the floor and out of the room and into the living room, where you lie down next to Maromi's dead body, and plant a kiss on her dented head as you continue to weep. When your crying calms down to sighs, you pull your phone out of your bra strap and dial 911. Within three seconds, without the line even ringing, an operator answers.

"Brookfield 911," the operator says.

You take a deep breath, still lying on the hardwood floor. "I've just murdered my husband. My name is Shiho Wright, 2816 South Bellway Avenue, and I've just murdered my husband. The door is open." You then hang up.

Less than ten minutes later, the police arrive, with four of them swarming into the living room, followed by two detectives. The police proceed to search the house while one of the detectives helps you to your feet. You wipe the tears from your face as he attempts to lead you into the den, where the uniformed officers have congregated. "I understand it's hard to see him in this condition, but I need a statement, and I need to ask you questions about what happened. Are you ready?"

Soberly, you nod, and walk with the detectives into the den.

One of the officers turns from the body at your approach. He addresses the lead detective. "This is one of the most brutal suicides I've ever seen, Lieutenant."

You are momentarily confused. "Suicide? But I killed him. I broke every bone in his body before bashing his skull in with that baseball bat." You point to the bat on the floor, where a policeman is planting a small sandwich-board-style marker with the number "1" printed on it. Someone takes a photograph of it.

The detective nods. "So you came in, found the dog dead, and your husband in this condition, dead by his own hand?"

Your confusion worsens. "Aren't you listening to me? I said I killed my husband!"

The policeman photographing the scene turns to the detectives. "Got a suicide note here, boss."

The lead detective puts on a pair of blue polyurethane gloves and takes a piece of paper from the table next to the easy chair and places it in a plastic bag. "Yep. This is pretty open-and-shut here. Clearly a suicide. Suicide by baseball bat." He turns to you. "Ma'am, I think he left this for you to read. Please take a look."

He holds the bag containing the letter out for you to see. It is flecked with brains and blood, but still clearly says, "THIS IS A SUICIDE NOTE" in large letters.

You begin to laugh. A titter at first, then a belly laugh. All the officers turn to look at you.

"Ma'am," the lead detective places his hand on your shoulder and hands the bag to his partner, "I understand his suicide note may have distressed you, but please try to calm down. I'll see to it that the department arranges some grief counseling for you; it's never easy when a loved one takes his own life."

"Another officer speaks into his radio. "Dispatch, we need the medical examiner; no need for Brookfield CSI to come out; Detective Lewis says this is obviously a suicide. Suicide by baseball bat."

With that you double over, laughing harder and harder. This is the funniest thing that's ever happened to you.

 **O-O-O**

Outside, the neighbors have braved the crisp November night to crowd around the police vehicles blocking the road. Among them is Delilah Hanson. She walks up to one of the officers left for crowd control. "What happened here, officer?"

The officer turns to face her, and a flicker of recognition registers in his eyes. "Apparently the man of the house murdered the family dog with a baseball bat, and then proceeded to beat himself to death with the same bat."

A murmur could be heard through the throng of neighbors. "How tragic!" exclaims one.

"Ma'am," says the officer, "it's a great thing you've done here tonight. It's justice. True justice."

"I know," she says. "One day, there will be justice for all. I have decreed it."

"Thank you," says the policeman and several of the neighbors join him in expressing the same sentiment.

"I'm looking forward to it," says another.

And with that, she turns to leave, the entire congregation of officers and neighbors forget Delilah completely as soon as she is gone.

She drives home, and comes up the stairs and into the living room, taking off her jacket. I look at the empty crook of my arm, confused, then look over at her. "When did you go outside?" I ask.

"I had to get a pack of cigarettes out of my car; I told you when I left," she says.

"Oh, right," I say. She sits back down, pulls out a cigarette, and lights it.

"I've had a wonderful evening just chilling here with you," I say. "Have you?"

"Yes," she says. "It's been a good night for me, too."


	3. Stave 3: Wagging Their Tails Behind Them

**[Disclaimer: While the original author of "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack - dot - World" maintains with absolute assurance that the character of Delilah Hanson ("The Killer," and the Übermensch), is based on a real and terrifyingly dangerous person, and some elements of this story are rooted in what are stated as true events in his book, this story is a work of fiction.]**

 **[To read more about allegedly real tales of the real Übermensch, please visit the following website:]**

 **[www talesoftheubermensch com, home of the free ebook "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack -dot- World".]**

 **[Trigger warnings for coprophagia, child rape, incest, child nudity, and pedophilia.]**

 **[Special warning: This is a story about a particularly sick individual, and while there are descriptions of child rape contained herein, I have taken pains to make them as spare as possible, and to do absolutely nothing that could be seen as glamorizing or glorifying pedophilia. Quite the opposite, in fact. As such, there are literally no descriptions of child sex, and for this and other reasons, I do not believe that this chapter in any way violates the site's terms of service.]**

 **Tales of the Übermensch: The Series  
Stave 3: …Wagging Their Tails Behind Them**

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep  
And doesn't know where to find them  
Leave them alone, and they'll come home  
Wagging their tails behind them

Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep,  
And dreamt she heard them bleating;  
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,  
For they were still a-fleeting.

Then up she took her little crook,  
Determined for to find them;  
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,  
For they'd left their tails behind them.

It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray  
Into a meadow hard by,  
There she espied their tails side by side,  
All hung on a tree to dry.

She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,  
And over the hillocks went rambling,  
And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,  
To tack each again to its lambkin.

 _ **-Little Bo Peep,**_ **circa 16** **th** **Century, Old Calendar**

It is Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006. I am 35 years old. My name is Marcus.

Delilah and I have been broken up since late November, 2005, but she had asked me over to talk on this night, my mother's birthday. Unaware that anything was amiss in my life, I had come over expecting a conversation, and perhaps even some post-breakup sex, but Delilah had sat me on her couch in the living room; with her roommates out for the evening, the apartment was dark, with only the light above the dining room table lit the room.

Delilah stood in the entryway between the living room and the dining room after sitting me down in the center of the sofa, and clapped her hands together.

"Marc," she said, "you're completely crazy."

Well.

I started to get up to leave. "I didn't come here to be insulted," I had said.

"Wait," she remarked hastily, "I can prove it."

I sat back down. "Fine," I said. "Prove it."

"Marc, you ate your own _shit!"_ she exclaimed.

I opened my mouth to speak, but a memory began to blossom in my mind. A memory of sitting on the sofa in my old apartment, back when we were still dating, a plate in front of me filled with Thai seafood curry and a giant turd on top of it. I remembered beginning to eat, unable to recognize what was on my plate, and then an unexpected taste as realization of what this pasty, oily substance was in my mouth and throat.

This was forbidden knowledge; this was something a man was never meant to experience, something he was never meant to know.

And I wanted to die. "Del- Del-lilah… Please kill me…" I croaked, trying not to swallow again.

"I told you not to eat it, and now you have to finish what you started," Delilah said from behind the locked bedroom door.

I knew in that moment that something evil was happening to me, and that she was a serial killer. I was in the clutches of a serial killer, and she had been toying with me for the last ten months before she finally killed me. I tried to get up to go into the kitchen and drink drain cleaner from under the sink, but every time I tried to get up, my legs wouldn't work, and I would fall back down onto the couch.

"Please kill me," I wailed again.

Delilah's voice cooed from behind the locked door. "Finish what's on your plate and mommy will help you. And be sure to lick the plate clean. Then I will give you what you want."

 **O-O-O**

Years later, in 2006, Delilah had sat down on the sofa to my right, so she could speak into my right ear. I could not move or speak, and she instructed me to close my mouth and my eyes, which I did. She began to coo to me, to speak to me in soothing tones, as she described what she planned to do to me over the next several years, and all the easter eggs she had hidden in films, songs, video games, television shows, and various other media to memorialize me before she killed me. I marveled at the power and sway she held over me, and lusted for this power. Most of all, despite all the horror I was being subjected to, I knew that I loved her, completely and unconditionally. As she spoke, I idly wondered to myself if I was being made to love her, and reasoned that it didn't matter. It was real to me, and that was all that was important.

Now, over an hour later as she speaks without pause or hesitation, she begins to describe an anime series that I will one day watch with the girlfriend she has arranged for me to be with at the time, a woman named Karen Kandinsky. The anime in question is a 37-episode series I would watch around my 37th birthday, a global sensation called _Death Note_. Not knowing the context of the title, or that the Japanese use the word "note" to describe a notebook, I think to myself that it must be about someone who kills people with music. She does not describe the plot of the anime, or give me any details about it, save one:

"While it is a secret that The Killer in _Death Note_ is based on a real person, it is an even bigger secret that the detective searching for The Killer and the people he employs in the series are also based on real people. There are actual people obsessed with hunting me, and should you ever encounter them, this is what you will do…"

She begins to describe an elaborate protocol, spending well over half an hour describing how things would go should the task force or the detective were ever to approach me. I listen, rapt. She is especially obsessed with a Japanese woman that works for the detective, a woman who would do anything, even whore herself out and sleep with her targets in order to gain their trust before killing them. As assassin and surveillance expert. A woman named Suki.

When she is finished with this particular phase of her "prophecy", which is more of an augur than a programming session, she erases my memory of everything she had told me about _Death Note_ and the task force associated with catching her, and begins to tell me about the anime series again, from the beginning. As the memories begin to slowly fade over thirty or forty-five seconds, I desperately try to hold on them, but it is like trying to catch smoke in your hands, and suddenly they are gone, as if they were never there.

"While it is a secret that The Killer in _Death Note_ is based on a real person," she says, "the anime series stands as a monument to a detective that almost caught me when I was very young…"

She pauses. "And no, I'm not going to tell you the fucking story!" she practically spits in my ear.

And with that, she continues. It's going to be a very long night, one I soon learn I will not begin to remember for nearly two years, at which time Delilah will be long gone from Milwaukee and completely absent from my life.

 **O-O-O**

It is Friday, March 24th, 2006. Your name is Bruce Cohen. You are 34 years old.

Your name is Bruce Cohen, and you are a teacher of first grade students at the Lester Pollux Elementary School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Your name is Bruce Cohen, and you are naked and crouching over your bed, one of your eight year old daughters nude beneath you.

The scene is beautiful to you, as it has been every Friday night for the last two and a half years, as you rape your daughter, Bella. It's beautiful enough to make you want to cry, but you don't. That's alright, though, because Bella is crying hard enough for both of you. Her twin sister, Anna, lies in the other bedroom with her hands over her ears, trying to drown out the sounds of sobs from her sister. She well knows that tomorrow night it will be her turn. Some weekends, you have the girls together, and they hold hands in solidarity. They both have been putting on weight, which is common when a daddy loves his little girls so much, but you don't care; they are still beautiful to you. They remind you of their mother.

You have to laugh. Your wife left you for another man three years ago, and all it takes to keep your children silent is a threat you repeat to them every Sunday before you take them home, that if they tell their mother or anyone else what you do to them each weekend, or act as if they are anything but happy, well-behaved children, you will take your time killing their mommy.

It's an idle threat, of course, but an effective one. You're never going to be caught, you're sure of that.

Bella moans in spite of herself, and a tear rolls down the side of her face; there is a wet spot on the pillow on either side of her head.

O-O-O

It is Monday, March 27th, 2006, and you stop by Starbucks on the way to work, as you do every workday, to get your shot of caffeine before going to the school where you teach. You are served by an unfamiliar barista, a woman whose name tag reads "Delilah", and she eyes you like something she scraped off of the bottom of her shoe. While taking your venti mocha latte to your car, you notice that someone has written "The Rapist" on the cup, instead of your name. Rattled, you drink half your coffee before tossing the cup out the window on the highway, wanting the cup, and the word, to be as far away from you as possible, and vow never to set foot in that Starbucks, so you'd never have to deal with that fat, crazy RadFem bitch Delilah ever again.

Class goes as smoothly as it ever does on a Monday morning, with the kids starting the day as their usual rowdy selves following a weekend of sugared cereal and soda pop. An hour and a half after lunch, one of your students, Jason, raises his hands and asks to go to the nurse's office. You write him a slip and send him on his way.

Ten minutes later, following a spelling test, another student, a girl named Melissa, stands and begins shrugging out of her dress. You notice that the entire remainder of the class is staring at the clock.

"Melissa! What are you doing? Put your clothes back on right now!"

The girl ignores you, and instead, as you hear the clock ticks to the next minute, the rest of the class rises, en masse, and begins taking off all their clothing. You panic, screaming at them to stop, but no one listens to you. When they are all naked, they all swarm around your desk.

At that moment, at precisely 2:37 in the afternoon, the door to your classroom opens, and the Principal of the school enters, furious, with Jason and the school nurse in tow. "See?" says Jason, pointing at you. "Every week he makes us do this so he can touch us and play with us."

The only way the situation could possibly have been worse is if you had been caught with your pants around your ankles and a dildo in each hand.

 **O-O-O**

And that was how your career in teaching ends. You are immediately dismissed to the Principal's office while the nurse orders the children to dress. Many of them cry, claiming that you had told them all that if they ever told anyone, or if anyone ever found out, you would kill their mommies.

It only goes downhill from there, as you are swiftly arrested, and the judge denies bail. After a social services evaluation of your children, the story breaks that you were not only molesting your class, but your two daughters as well, as confirmed by a gynecologist's examination of Bella and Anna, as well as extensive therapy. It turns out that Bella had been pretending to be Anna during the nights it was her turn, saving her gentler and more sensitive sister from your advances as much as she possibly could.

The case becomes international news, and in short order, every student you've had since you began teaching at the school five years ago comes forward with the same story, that you touched them inappropriately and had them disrobe once a week for "play time", and threatened to kill their mommies if they didn't keep quiet. The Principal of the school only manages to keep his job after it was concluded by investigators that these activities happened during his weekly staff meetings, when he and the office staff were occupied, all of which served to make your alleged acts seem even more premeditated and meticulously planned.

All in all, you are charged with 237 felonies, each with a minimum sentence of ten to twenty years in prison. After a twelve-week trial, which was required for all 183 children, including your two beloved daughters, to testify against you, you are convicted and sentenced to fifteen consecutive life sentences without chance of parole.

Through it all, you protest your innocence in every case except the charges brought on behalf of your daughters, and spend every night in your solitary jail cell stunned as to how you could be so completely and utterly set up by your students. Try as you might, you can make no sense of it, but your mind keeps drifting back to that fateful morning, and that enormous barista and her "Rapist" cup. Her imperious glare as she handed you your coffee is burned into your mind.

 **O-O-O**

It is Tuesday, April 15th, 2006, and a Japanese woman in her mid 30s sits in a café in Tribeca, Manhattan, sipping a latte as she dials a number on her cell phone. After two rings, the call is answered by a man with a British accent, using a voice disguiser.

"Lawman," he says.

The woman, who wears a black leather miniskirt and a black halter top, adjusts her copy of the New York Times on the table in front of her. "Lawman, this is Pyramid 3. We have an anomaly in Milwaukee. The subject is currently in police custody."

There is a long pause. "Do you believe The Killer is behind this?"

The Japanese woman purses her lips at the appellation. "I do, sir. Very high probability. Over a hundred schoolchildren molested by their teacher, in their classroom, over a period of five years without ever getting caught until now, and by all indications, that number will continue to keep rising for the foreseeable future."

Another pause. "Pull all units and begin an investigation, immediately. Interview the subject at your earliest convenience and begin a search in the area for other anomalies. With all those babies in the late 1990s in Chicago, she may be operating out of the Midwest. Include Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, and Minneapolis in your search."

"Yes, sir," she says. "This appears to be the biggest lead since she brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11."

"Good," Lawman, also known as Pyramid 1, says. "I'll be looking for an initial report within six hours."

"You'll have it in four, Boss," the woman says.

"Good work, Suki. Just be careful. We don't want another incident like we had in Montreal, when we lost Pyramid 6," the man replies. "Tread lightly." He then hangs up.

Suki dials another number. An older man, also with a British accent, answers.

"Pyramid 2, this is Pyramid 3. The Boss says to rally the troops and meet up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We have a solid lead on The Killer. I'll take point and rent a large suite for us to work out of."

Suki makes her way down to Battery Park before heading to the airport, just to get one last look at the Statue of Liberty before leaving for Milwaukee. As she passes the war memorial, a man in his fifties wearing tattered clothing begs her for change, holding out a dented paper cup. "Would you kindly help me?" he asks. She ignores him, and keeps walking.

 **O-O-O**

It is June 15th, 2007, and Delilah Hanson, personal aide to Wisconsin State Senator Davis is inspecting the Columbia Correctional Facility in Portage, Wisconsin, for the second time in fifteen years.

As Delilah and the warden are preparing to exit Cell Block "C", a cowed, terrified looking man is being brought in with two guards, one on either side of him. As he passes the pair, screaming begins throughout the block, and toilet paper begins raining down from the second level, many rolls leaving long trails behind them. The prisoner bucks against his guards, turning around and looking after the heavyset woman with a horrified expression on his face, a look of recognition. The guards roughly force him to face forward and keep him marching towards his cell.

Delilah glances over her shoulder, then turns back to the warden. "Wasn't that Bruce Cohen?" she asks.

"It was," the warden responds. "We wanted to keep him in the SHU for his own protection, but the governor ordered him to be put in with the general population.

"Isn't that dangerous?" she asks.

"It is. We'll do what we can to protect him, but with a man with his record, well, I'm afraid it's just a matter of time before someone in here kills him."

"Just like Jeffrey Dahmer, who was also held here, if I recall," she muses.

"Exactly. I checked our records, and I noted that you were also here the week before Dahmer was murdered by one of the inmates. The man who killed Dahmer and another inmate, one of Dahmer's few friends in the facility, claimed that he heard a voice in his mind telling him that he was the 'Chosen One', and that God had commanded him to kill the cannibal." The warden pauses. "Of course, Dahmer egged on the inmates, making fake body parts out of food, decorating them with 'blood' made of ketchup, and then would leave them where other inmates would find them. He was begging for trouble."

"My presence that week was a coincidence, I assure you," Delilah laughs at her lie, as they are processed through the security checkpoint, and thinks to herself that she is lucky to have had enough time to adjust the programming of every prisoner in the block, as well as the entire staff of the prison today before Cohen's arrival.

Through the bars of the prison block, a lone voice could be heard screaming, "If you tell anyone, Cohen, I'll kill your mommy!"

And another voice: "You're a dead fucking kike, short-eyes!"

Delilah smiles at this; she had made a promise to Marcus, a promise she fully intends to keep, even though he doesn't remember it, but that won't stop her from acting as she pleases until that promised day arrives. And it pleases her to see to it that this man would be gang raped and beaten in the showers and his cell every day and night for the rest of his life, which would finally come to an end on July 21st, 2016. The guards would watch on, and do nothing, ignoring his pleas for help, until finally the day would come that he would stop begging them to assist him, and accept his fate, as his poor daughters had.

There is a new world coming, she muses, and Bruce Cohen will not live to see it.


	4. Stave 4: Fall of the Innocents

**[Disclaimer: While the original author of "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack - dot - World" maintains with absolute assurance that the character of Delilah Hanson ("The Killer," and the Übermensch), is based on a real and terrifyingly dangerous person, and some elements of this story are rooted in what are stated as true events in his book, this story is a work of fiction.]**

 **[To read more about allegedly real tales of the real Übermensch, please visit the following website:]**

 **[www talesoftheubermensch com, home of the free ebook "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack -dot- World".]**

 **[Trigger warnings for mentions of child molestation, references to coprophagia, and descriptions of murder.]**

 **Tales of the Übermensch: The Series  
Stave 4: Fall of the Innocents**

It is July 31st, 2009. My name is Marcus. I am 38 years old.

I am sitting on my bed in the Milwaukee County Public Psychiatric facility. This is my second commitment, and the first one against my will.

My life for the last eighteen months has been a living hell. It all began on January 28th, 2008, when, after five straight days of waking up at 4AM and tossing and turning while I tried to tease apart a knot of repressed memory, something finally shook loose. In a matter of two weeks, I remembered eating feces in my living room at my old apartment, and ended up in a hospital with pancreatitis, obsessed with the belief that I had been infected with hepatitis-C.

As more memories unfolded inside the mess that was my mind, I realized that this was just the tip of the iceberg. I had a complete breakdown, and checked myself into the Aurora private psychiatric hospital, believing I would have access to a hypnotherapist. I laugh at the thought, having had no idea at the time of the reality of spending my time in a mental hospital.

And just like my last stay, I do not believe that I will ever leave this place. Not alive, anyway. She has programmed yet another wave of artificial psychosis, as one crazy belief after another invades my mind, and I am forced to accept one outlandish scenario after another as the truth. Outside of these walls, I believe that entire world is dying. That the entire population of the planet is being forced to commit mass suicide, and if I ever make it beyond the confines of this place, I will be completely alone. That I will wander the empty earth for a million years, immortal, before I am taken aboard a starship by visiting aliens.

They will force me to watch as the earth is destroyed by a black hole, then take me to an interstellar hub, where I will be put in a menagerie, a zoo, with other lasts of their races, of those who had offended Almighty God Herself. People of various alien races will laugh and point as I sit in my cage, my own excrement as my only food as I spend the entire remaining lifespan of the universe like a caged animal.

Then, I believe that I will be confined to my room in the mental hospital, with the other denizens of the ward pounding on the door, unable to open the unlocked door, as I am forced to eat and drink out of the toilet for sustenance for the rest of eternity, and if I ever flush the toilet, the crazy people banging on my door will break in and tear me limb from limb, after which I will be cast into hell.

It just gets worse from there.

For much of the past year and a half, I have spent sixteen hours a day asleep, unable to face the reality of a nearly omnipotent being toying with and destroying my life. My career lies in ruins. I have ten rental properties around my neck like a weight, and over two million dollars in debt that I can never hope to repay. For many months I spent day after day on the sofa, with either G4 or Spike TV on the television, my back turned to the screen and lie on the couch as a horror show plays out in my head. The economy is collapsing, and might never recover, and I know that because of her, it is all my fault.

Before my most recent commitment, however, I had begun to do something useful with my days. In the wake of a new wave of recovered memories, I had discovered the secret behind The Killer: The Ubermensch; as a result, I had begun to write a blog, detailing everything that I had remembered thusfar. I was roundly mocked for my insanity, as people wrote me off as a crackpot. I had just barely finished the prologue before I ended up in here.

If I ever get out of this place, I swear that I will get it all written down, that I will try to make some sense of what has happened to me, this horrible, impossible series of events. It's a nightmare that, try as I might, I can never wake up from.

And maybe, just maybe, if I am very, very lucky, I will find a single person who believes me. Believes me completely. Even if I never do, my blog will stand as a monument to The Killer and her crimes, as well as my victimhood, and the terror I have experienced at her hands.

Delilah is gone now, escaped back to rural Minneapolis in the days when I was beginning to remember, lest she make it too easy for me to track her down in Milwaukee and try to kill her. I already remember that there is a tracker in my car, and that if I come within a hundred miles of Minneapolis, she will receive a call, and I will have earned a penalty.

Not only my actions, but my very thoughts and opinions are to be judged, and I will be punished accordingly, until the fateful day that she finally kills me.

Worst of all, I cannot socialize with anyone. Every single person who has even laid eyes upon me will die sometime in 2016. I am toxic, a walking plague, whose very sight means death. She knows what drives me, knows of the perpetual loneliness I have suffered throughout my life, and has made it impossible for me to spend any time with anyone without endangering them. At best, even if I ignore her entreaties to stay away from everyone, I will still have the experience ruined by the feelings of guilt she knows I will feel. As a result, simple, everyday things like grocery shopping become middle-of-the-night or 5AM outings for me, so I will be exposed to as few people as possible.

Additionally, everything that I love will be erased on that promised day. That means that every television show that I grew up watching, enamored, every film, every song and comic book and novel, will all be destroyed and erased from the collective minds of the world. That means I will not watch, listen to, or read anything that I have not already experienced, lest I condemn them to the dustbin of history for the crime of loving them. I imagine the loss of Star Trek and feel myself descending into a well of almost infinite despair.

I stand, and make my way into the common room, sitting down in front of the television. A news anchor speaks. "Once again, the Hated One is locked up, safe from the populace. He is to be killed on sight." A picture of my face is shown. I tremble and try to sink into the couch, to disappear completely. Despite the words of the newsman and my face on the screen, no one around me reacts. No one kills me. I imagine that if I do get out and everyone is still alive, that I will spend the following three months begging my girlfriend, Karen, to do all the grocery shopping and run all my errands, lest I leave the house and risk death at the hands of strangers.

Finally, a woman to my left speaks. "I hate that fucking guy."

"Yeah," says a man to my right. "What a sick fucking freak. I wish she would finally get it over with and kill him."

 _{Me too,}_ I think. _{I wish she would just get it over with and stop this endless torment.}_

Events like this are common when I am having an episode, when I am locked up, but no one will remember them. It's just her way of fucking with me. She must really enjoy it, to do it so much.

"Yeah," I say. "Sick piece of shit. Why does she let him walk around free so much of the time?"

Everyone acts as if they can't hear me. They probably recognize me, but are forbidden from acting. I laugh, hopelessly. I don't know if this broadcast is being sent only to County, or if so much of the population has been taken over that the story is going out live to all of southeastern Wisconsin. Surely there must still be people she doesn't control yet.

Dinner then arrives, a nauseating menu of almost inedible food. I fucking hate this place, but am convinced that I will never see the outside world again. At least not the world I know. I stare at the chain tattoo upon my wrist, which she forced me to get back in March of 2008, which references the game _Bioshock_ , a game she had created specifically for me, as a morality test, a test not just for me, but for everyone. Anyone who harvests the "Little Sisters" in the game, rather than saving them, will face a gruesome death when the time comes.

I take my tray and sit down alone at a table nearby. I could go for a big porterhouse steak right now. Instead, I take a bite of my pasta salad, which makes me gag. I spit it out, then throw it away and go back to my room.

At least I'm losing weight in here.

 **O-O-O**

It is May 15th, 1983.

Your name is Rosemary Sorano. You are ten years old.

Your name is Rosemary Sorano, and you are the only daughter of Antonio Sorano, a wealthy businessman who owns a vineyard just outside of Naples, Italy.

Your name is Rosemary Sorano, and you are sitting in a library, reading through an English to Italian dictionary, the pages flying by at a breathtaking pace.

Another book, atop a stack of books on the culture and history of the United States of America sits finished to your right at the table at which you sit. You finished it over an hour ago, digesting its 780 pages in an impressive two hours and seventeen minutes. You remember every word of it, and could recite it from memory, as well as describe every photograph, every figure in the entire book.

You are already fluent in twelve languages, but have waited until now to digest the whole of the English language. You have been preparing for this day for three years, carefully erasing your identity from the Italian government's files and computer records, and creating a new identity for yourself.

You have a plan. One that will take decades to realize.

When you are finished with the dictionary, you take a taxi back out of the city and into the countryside, finally arriving at your home. You enter the mansion, which is dark, and turn on the lights in the foyer. Your papa is sitting still in an easy chair in the adjacent drawing room, a revolver on the table next to him. The light from the foyer's chandelier illuminates his legs, ending in a diagonal line across his thighs, and the polished chrome of the revolver glistens as it waits as silently as your papa does.

Underneath the revolver is a signed letter, a suicide note you had him write this morning. Without saying a word, you go upstairs to your room, pack your bags, and count a sheaf of Swiss bearer bonds that you had him withdraw from the family business's accounts, representing the bulk of his money. You place the bonds in a manila envelope and insert them into one of your bags.

You have trouble sleeping on this, your final night in Italy; the memories of what your papa has forced you to do in this bed over the last eight years haunts you. You've studied hypnosis, and hoped to use it to undo the damage to your psyche, only to find through experimentation on others, that although you could wipe the memories from your conscious mind, the damage to your subconscious was indelible and cumulative. There is a Virus inside of you, one that resides in many people in this world, that proliferates through violence, rape, and trauma. It is a living thing, despite being a life form of memory and action. It reproduces, which is the most basic definition of life.

As a result of your infection, you would never be all that was promised; you are a tarnished angel, and would so forever be. You're only ten years old, but are already a fattened 82 kilograms. You will always be fat, there is nothing you can do about that, as much as you would like to.

The next morning, you rise and call for a taxi to the airport. You then descend the stairs with your bags and leave them in the mansion's foyer by the double front doors, then enter the drawing room, where your papa still sits, perfectly still.

"E 'il momento, papà," you say in Italian. "Eseguire istruzioni ventidue."

With a nod, your father picks up the pistol, presses it to his right temple, and pulls the trigger without hesitation, spraying blood across the carpet and against the wall. You feel a sudden stab of regret, but you have made a decision. This man was your father, and while part of you loves him, the rest of you can never forgive the way he tore the wings from your back and threw them to the ground. You exit the premises with your bags and wait outside for the taxi to take you to Rome. The murder you have just committed already haunts you, as does every cruel and ironic thing you did the the man before his death, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that with your perfect memory, it always will.

It is a long drive, over two hours, and as you watch the rolling hills and mountains of the Italian countryside by the Mediterranean coast, you sigh and realize that you are truly going to miss this place, but this is hardly the venue in which to get your work done.

Once in the airport in Rome, you drag your bags into the rest room nearest to the Pan-Am ticketing counter, and are lucky to find a lone woman in the facilities with you. "Ciao, sono Rosmarino," you say. "Piacere di conoscerti." You offer your hand.

The woman takes your hand to shake it, and as she does, you swipe your thumb against her palm and draw the hand slowly to her forehead. You make contact, cooing all the while with soothing commands, and in seconds she is yours. You implant the necessary instructions to ensure complete control and obedience, and then rouse her to wakefulness.

"Ho bisogno di agire come il mio tutore e mi comprare un biglietto per Minneapolis, Minnesota, Stati Uniti d'America, attraverso l'aeroporto internazionale JFK di New York City," you say. The woman smiles and nods, taking a large stack of lira from you. Together, you buy the necessary tickets, and she sees you to the gate. You fly on Pan-Am flight 194, and after a six hour layover at JFK, half of which is spent explaining the bearer bonds in customs in broken English, which you fake in order to make things more difficult for the customs agent, and incline him to let you pass without giving you any real trouble. Afterwards, you board another flight for Minneapolis.

While you are bound for Minneapolis, you read a copy of _Also Sprach Zarathustra_ , by Friedrich Nietzsche, in the original German. You've been enamored with this book for years, and always find the original translation to be the most accurate and enlightening. Nietzsche envisioned the Ubermensch as a concept, an idea of the next stage of human evolution, not a real person, despite the personification of that ideal that he wrote into the book, but here you are, the fulfillment of Zarathustra's prophecy. Niezsche wrote that the character of the Ubermensch had style, but you have decided to deliberately misinterpret this statement, as it is also acceptable in English to define the word "character" as a _dramatis persona_ in a play. As a result, you would spend your life wearing masks. Your next character is already designed, your method perfected, and you will play her exquisitely. Another character, the first of many to come, was born this morning, when you murdered your papa. It is the character of "L'Assassino": "The Killer".

A man sitting next to you in first class marvels at the book you are reading. In English, with a distinct New York accent, he says, "Such an advanced book for such a young girl. Do you grasp Nietzsche's vision of the Ubermensch?"

You smile at him, resting the book open and face down in your lap. "I do," you answer in a perfect Californian accent, one you learned from watching American television shows and movies. "It's not a difficult concept."

"You speak German and English, then?" he asks.

"I speak over a dozen languages," you answer truthfully.

"Truly a brilliant girl," he marvels. "You must make your family proud."

"My parents are dead," you say without emotion.

"I'm sorry," he says, with a look of concern.

"I'm not," you say. "My mother died in childbirth, and my father is recently deceased. His passing was not unwelcome. He used to touch me, you see."

"That's terrible!" he exclaims. "I hope he was punished for doing so."

"Oh, trust me," you answer. "He was."

Once in Minneapolis, you take another taxi out of town, riding for several hours until you reach the village of Rice. The taxi pulls away after dropping you off at a fairly affluent four-bedroom colonial house, and you carry your bags to the door, ringing the doorbell.

A childless woman in her thirties answers. You offer your hand, and she takes it. Once again you swipe her palm and draw her hand to her forehead as you speak in perfect English. Five minutes later, you rouse her and say, "You want to ask me inside."

The woman pauses. "Of course, my dear. Come in, please. Do you need help with your bags?"

"No," you say, reflecting that your dark hair and olive skin are a close match for the woman's, just as your research had indicated. "I can manage on my own." You lift your bags into the foyer. "What is your name?" you ask, already knowing the answer to your question.

"Elizabeth Hanson. Who are you, child?"

You smile; and so it begins. "I'm your daughter, Delilah."

The woman looks confused for a moment, then a look of recognition washes over her face. "Of course! Delilah! Welcome home, honey!" She embraces you warmly.

"When does daddy get home?" you ask in a perfect Midwestern accent, aping Elizabeth's own.

 **O-O-O**

It is January 20th, 2000. Your alias is Delilah Hanson. You are 26 years old.

Your alias is Delilah Hanson, and you are entering a nursing home with your "mother", Elizabeth Hanson, to tend to the needs of your "father's" aunt, because no one else on your father's side of the family can be bothered to do it. As she enters the foyer of the nursing home, Elizabeth goes down like a sack of potatoes. You rush to her side and crouch down, screaming for help.

Within an hour, she is dead from a massive stroke, and you weep bitter tears, real tears, at her passing. She has been more of a parent to you than either of your biological parents ever were. It doesn't matter that she was programmed to love you. It doesn't matter that she wasn't your blood. To all intents and purposes, she was the real thing, and treated you like a beloved daughter from the day you met her.

At the funeral, Dennis, your "father" is cold, as he has always been. You've always despised the man, and resented him. Perhaps it is something in his subconscious that always knew you had made him believe you were his daughter, yet always knew deep down that you were not, but he always treated you with disdain, claiming it was your out of control eating and your lack of pride in your appearance. Even now, as your mother is laid to rest, you can feel his embarrassment at your weight, and you hate him for it. Perhaps it is good that the next stage of your plan involves moving to Milwaukee, to deal with the man one of your scouts has recently found, a man named Marcus. You can't wait until the appointed day, just so you can be away from him and his withering stares. Without your mother to keep you company, you need a big, intensive project to sink your teeth into, to take your mind off the devastating loss you feel.

According to the information the scout reported, and according to your own protocols, Marcus is a probably a dangerous sociopath, either a pedophile or even a possible serial killer. You've already decided to unleash The Killer upon him, and to spend thirteen years – a new record for you – to torment and kill him. Your family believes that you have a career that requires a lot of travel, and you've travelled all over the country, and the world, killing murderers and rapists that have gone otherwise unpunished. The Killer, all told, has killed and/or punished over two thousand people by now, and each death has had the same stab of regret that you felt when you murdered your papa all those years ago. It's dirty work, but it must be done. This is a rotten world, and mankind must pay for its sins, especially for what has been done to you.

You sprinkle dirt onto your mother's coffin from a ceramic shaker, and pass it to your aunt; you walk away, unnoticed, from the proceedings, then get into your shitty brown Plymouth Sundance and drive away. You despise the rest of your father's family, these selfish fucking people and all their dirty little secrets. In your grief, you'd kill them all if it wouldn't require you to go through all the trouble of establishing another cover.

Your plan is working. The worker caste has fulfilled its mandate, and you control nearly one and a half billion people already. It's just a matter of time before all will fall under your control; the world's population will likely be over seven billion by that point, then things can really begin to change. Already, you control the world's governments, media, and militaries. Anyone who really matters is under your influence. It's just the small fry that are left, a mopping up, as it were, and everyone will be consumed by your Virus, a hypnotic Virus to combat the psychological Virus that burns in all humanity, proliferating itself with its violence and abuse throughout the human population of the world.

Billions will die to complete your objective, and only then will you have your revenge. But you will die first. You've already made the arrangements. As vengeful as you are, you have no desire to see mankind maimed. You can't stomach it, so you have dictated that the workers will kill you before a single human suffers by your command on the promised day. Yes, you have murdered, murdered plenty, but you have no desire to see suffering on this scale, a scale of billions, and what will be left… well… that is a secret, a secret you will take to your grave.

You idly wonder if there is a God, and if there is, if He or She will make you suffer for what you have done, for what you intend to do, for what you have set in motion. Your murders are nothing compared to the scale that this would mean, the horrific deaths of people who have not just committed sins, but for the death of the Virus, the painless, gentle murders of those who were the victims as well. If you weren't so bitter, you'd almost feel guilty enough to stop.

But perhaps you yourself are the worst sociopath of all, because you don't feel all that guilty for what you're contemplating, the monstrous crime you're about to commit. To keep from comforting yourself by reflecting that you are just killing murderers and rapists, you have placed morality traps in films, songs, video games and more, to target otherwise innocent people for gruesome deaths for the hideous crime of laughing at a certain character in a certain movie, for example.

You don't just murder the guilty, you plan to indiscriminately murder the innocent as well. That is The Killer's darkest secret.

You created The Killer to ensure that when the end came for the guilty, that there would be no one more worthy of death than you; that of anyone alive, you would be the most monstrous thing on earth, and that your passing would be a good thing, for all mankind.

The world will be a better place without you; you've seen to that long ago.

 **O-O-O**

It is April 2nd, 2016, and Suki sits in her apartment in Tribeca, Manhattan, looking over her computer. She picks up her smartphone and dials a familiar number, one she has committed to memory and has been forbidden to enter into her contacts list. When the call is completed, she will delete all reference to the number from the phone methodically, as she has done hundreds of times before.

"Lawman," says the familiar British voice through the voice disguiser.

"Pyramid 3," she says. "I have a huge breakthrough on The Killer, L."

The voice is annoyed. "I told you not to call me 'L'. I don't get off on that _Death Note_ shit like the rest of the team does. How would you like it if I started calling you 'Wedy', or 'Misa-Misa'?"

She pauses, blushing. "Not very good, sir. I apologize."

"Never mind that," the man says. "Report, Suki."

"Of course, Boss. I've just spent the last six hours reading a blog published in 2009 and 2010 from a man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who has had intimate and terrifying contact with The Killer. You're going to want to see this, sir."

"He actually calls her 'The Killer'?" the man asks.

"He does. Hypnosis, irony, tales of her murdering and tormenting victims, mindfuckery, the works. All the hallmarks of The Killer. It's her, alright, and he knows who she is. Dated her for years, and the kinds of shit she put him through, you just won't believe. I'll text you the link. And get this, he calls his blog 'Tales of the Ubermensch', like she's some kind of secular messiah or something. This puts her actions on a whole new level, and gives us an insight we've never had before. Oh, and to further confirm the validity of the blog… Remember the former lawyer with the child porn and the thirty children in Chicago back in the late 1990s? He's in there, under an alias, but he's in there nonetheless. It seems she gloated about him to this blogger thirteen years ago."

The man is stunned to silence at such a rare and valuable find. "So," he says after nearly thirty seconds, "Milwaukee again. It looks like we were right all along, that she was operating out of the Midwest. Do we reconvene the team there ASAP?"

"Eventually, sir. But we have a problem to take care of, first. There's apparently a report of the real cause and circumstances surrounding the downing of the Twin Towers described in the blog; if true, we need to deal with this loose end first, with extreme prejudice."

"Ah," Lawman says. "Wetwork. It's been a while for you. You up for it?"

Suki doesn't hesitate. "I am, sir. But first I need a complete background on a New York investment banker named Sam Henreid, circa 2001. That's Henreid, H-E-N-R-E-I-D. Could be an alias, but even if it isn't, there's enough information to track him down without his name."

"I'll have Mogi, Ide, Aizawa and Matsuda get on it right away. Just give me a minute to talk to Watari and he'll coordinate. Text Watari the link to the blog as well, and he'll get it to the team."

"Of course, sir. When that's complete, and we convene in Milwaukee, all we have to do is find a man named Marcus, and I'm convinced we'll find The Killer." She hangs up and looks out her window; she can see Central Park, which is now filled with the tents of over a million homeless people.

In a mansion outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, in the Holy Christian Empire of North America, formerly the United States, Lawman looks at the television as the noon State Prayer is being conducted by the anchorman on CNN, and smiles in anticipation.

 **(Author's Note: The first and sixth Staves of this story were written in March of 2010, envisioning a dark, dystopian theocracy in 2016, complete with over 60 percent unemployment. As it is now 2016 and no such events have happened, this story takes place technically in an alternate universe. This as such does not follow the predictions made in the book Tales of the Ubermensch: Hack dot World, but is my envisioning of some of what the original author described, with my own spin on it. I hope you have enjoyed the work so far, and with two more Staves to go, I hope you enjoy the remainder of the ride, and its eventual conclusion.)**


	5. Stave 5: Would You Kindly?

**[Disclaimer: While the original author of "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack - dot - World" maintains with absolute assurance that the character of Delilah Hanson ("The Killer," and the Übermensch), is based on a real and terrifyingly dangerous person, and some elements of this story are rooted in what are stated as true events in his book, this story is a work of fiction.]**

 **[To read more about allegedly real tales of the real Übermensch, please visit the following website:]**

 **[www talesoftheubermensch com, home of the free ebook "Tales of the Übermensch: Hack -dot- World".]**

 **[Trigger warning for passing references to pedophilia, child pornography, child rape, and child murder. Also, this tale contains depictions of suicide and mass murder.]**

 **Tales of the Übermensch: The Series  
Stave 5: Would You Kindly?**

It is Sunday, July 22nd, 2012. It is 4:37PM. My name is Marcus. I am 41 years old.

My name is Marcus, and I step into the public land beside the Milwaukee Art Museum, overlooking the shores of Lake Michigan, carrying a disassembled blue eight-person tent and a bedroll, both slung over my shoulders.

I approach a trio of tents set up next to each other, the only ones here, all set up in the middle of the park. At the street's edge is a row of twenty port-a-johns, awaiting the arrival of thousands of tents to fill the available space.

As of today, I am officially homeless.

I set up the tent, a process that takes over an hour, as I get to know my new neighbors, including a rather brash woman in her fifties named Mary and her three children. When I am done with the tent, I place the bedroll inside and go back to my car, making a total of five trips as I carry plastic totes of clothes, non-perishable food, water, and some personal items, including a pair of binders, one of which contains a printout of my blog, and the other, a ream of lined paper for me to write in. I have also brought a box of high quality pens, and a box of mechanical pencils.

I sit on a towel in front of my tent in the sweltering heat, and treat Mary and her grown children to a bunch of Powerbars as a peace offering for invading their space.

In a matter of weeks, this entire park will be full, as will all the parks in southeastern Wisconsin, thanks to a new emergency act of the State Legislature, signed into law three days ago, permitting homeless people to settle in public lands everywhere in the state.

Knowing that I was weeks from a sheriff's sale of my home, which has been in foreclosure for over a year, I decided to stake out a piece of prime land for myself while I could. My car is left abandoned to the repo men who have been searching for it for a month. In my pocket is $4,250, half of the last of my cash, in hundreds and fifties. It is enough to keep me in sundries and necessities, for a while, anyway.

The Meals-On-Wheels truck from Trinity Lutheran pulls up to the northbound curb of Lincoln Memorial Drive, and I follow my new neighbors to the truck, where we are each given a hot meal on a cardboard tray, a cold meal in a paper sack, and a gallon jug of water. We collectively make our way back to our tents, and Mary's kids go inside their tent to play a Pokemon game on a pair of Nintendo 3DS handheld consoles, which I am told have solar battery chargers.

I enter my tent and eat in silence before placing the detritus into a thirty-gallon handle-tie garbage bag I retrieve from a box of them I have purchased for this new phase of my life.

When I am done, I take my place on my towel and look at the lake for a while before powering up my iPad, which has not only cellular service, but a solar charger as well. I have maintained a post office box a few blocks away in order to receive mail, and I have a bank account and a debit card so I can pay my bills.

I pull up a browser to check the news on the coup this morning.

"So, what brings you here?" Mary asks me, lighting a fire in a portable fire pit in front of her tent.

I am thankful for the warmth as I read the headline on Huffington Post: "Acting President Armitage Orders Obama Execution as a Muslim, Announces New Constitution". I turn to face Mary.

"It's a long story, and you'd never believe a word of it if I told you," I say.

"Try me," she counters.

And what the hell. Why not? I begin to tell her my story, watching her eyes glaze over as she pegs me for a mental case. And why wouldn't she?

"So your penniless ex-girlfriend controls the world, and everything that is happening is your fault?" she asks finally.

"That's the gist of it, yes."

"Have you ever been in the care of a psychiatrist?" she asks me gently.

"Several," I say. "They didn't believe me any more than you do," I reply.

This is my life, and it's ending, one minute at a time. I pull out my blank binder, and begin to write.

At least admission to the art museum is free tomorrow.

 **O-O-O**

It is May 19th, 2001. It is 4:17PM. Your alias is The Killer. You are 28 years old.

Your alias is The Killer, and somewhere in Santa Barbara, California, a man stands atop the flat roof of his hillside ranch house. You stand ten feet away from him, your arm raised.

The man, Shay Davis, sees a gun in your hand.

In reality, your hand is empty.

The man sees a 14-year-old girl before him. In reality, he is confronted by a 28 year old woman. He only thinks you are underage.

And that, of course, is all part of the trap you set. The two of you had met online a few weeks before, and on this day of days, the last day of his life, he had brought you- this underage vixen, this tasty morsel- back to his house, expecting an afternoon of passionate, intimate exploration.

Instead, he has spent the last six hours trapped in a nightmare as his entire life was torn apart.

"It's not me you have to worry about," you say. "It's Justine. I called her. She's on her way. How far away does she live, Shay?"

Shay blanches.

"Look over there." You gesture with your "gun" at the house's chimney.

"No." Shay paces back and forth, running his fingers through his hair.

"Look over there!" you yell at him.

Shay looks. Around the chimney is tied a blue rope, ending in a simple, deadly noose.

"Look, the deal is still open. You put the noose around your neck, and you end this whole game. I will still clean up all the evidence. You're running out of time."

Downstairs, in the house below, sits an open safe filled with child pornography, and the photograph of a girl who has been missing for over a month.

"Or we can wait for her. And I will pull off my clothes, and run crying into her arms."

"What, unless I hang myself?" Shay is incredulous. How had this happened to his life? "I'll find you! I'll track you down!"

"Assuming you knew anything about me."

"What, a Dos Pueblos girl whose dad teaches at UC-Santa Barbara? Shouldn't be too hard to find."

"You really believed all that?"

Shay looks as though he has been slapped. "God! Who are you!?"

You smile, without mirth. It is a smile that never reaches your eyes. "It's hard to say for sure. Maybe not a Dos Pueblos girl. Maybe not the daughter of a med school professor..."

"Maybe not a friend of Christine Simpson." Shay speaks with resignation.

"Maybe not even a 14 year old child."

"Who the hell are you?" Shay explodes again.

You practically spit at him. "I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, _killed._ "

Shay notices a car pulling up his driveway and whimpers, dropping to the gravel atop the roof.

"She's gonna find it, Shay," you say in a hoarse whisper, crawling close to him. "She's gonna find it all. Look, put on the noose. Put on the noose and jump, and I'll stop it."

The woman gets out of her car, and begins to walk toward the front door of the house. "Shay?"

"She'll never find out. She'll just think that you were some sad man. Some sad man that she never should have left."

Shay is crying.

"Bad things, Shay." You lean over him. "Fucking awful things will happen to you in prison. This is the only way. Unless you killed yourself when you had the chance... it's the only way."

Below, Justine rings the doorbell again. "Shay?"

Shay is beaten. "I didn't kill her. I didn't kill Christine Simpson. I just watched."

You blink, expressionless.

"I wanted to take pictures, but he wouldn't let me. It was me and another guy." A pause. "I didn't do it, I swear. I'll tell you his name, and I'll help you find him. I'll help you find him." He places a hand on your shoulder, almost tenderly.

You seethe with rage. Your face twists into a mask of hatred. "I know his name. I know his name, Shay... You know it's funny, Jerry told me you did it before he killed himself."

Shay crouches down, holding his head in his hands, petrified. "It was him. It wasn't me!"

At the front door, Justine knocks. "Shay?"

You rise into a crouch, still close to him. You look into his face, your eyes cold and cruel. "I don't care."

Shay stops crying, his face full of sadness and grief. He stands, and walks to the chimney by the east end of the roof. Panting with emotion, he picks up the noose, and places it around his neck. A strangled cry escapes his throat as he tightens the rope and feels it close around him.

As he steps to the edge, he is filled with more fear than he has ever known in his life. He pants as he looks back at you, the little girl he knows only as Delilah, with a defeated expression on his face.

"Don't worry," you say. "I promise. I'll take care of it all."

He looks down, and begins to pitch forward.

And as he does, a funny thing happens. His mind is flooded with memories that were previously suppressed. He knows- knows!- that he's been had, that the world will see him for what he was: a pedophile, rapist and a murderer of children. He sees Justine's heartbroken expression in his mind.

He sees the turn of the earth, and feels the chains that have bound him as a slave for over two years. He sees you as you really are, and knows that you are the one who controls it all.

Controls everything. The entire world.

Shay screams in terror.

The rope pulls taut, and he is dead.

"Or not," you say without emotion.

Justine cries out, below.

Your task now completed, you climb down the ladder at the back of the house, retrieve your "schoolbag," and make your way through the woods to the next block, where your rental car is waiting.

Two hours later, now Delilah Hanson again, you sit in your room at the Motel 6 in Goleta, by the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport. In the morning, a private jet will fly you back to Minneapolis.

You don't need fancy hotels or fine foods. You eat a bite of a microwave burrito you purchased at a nearby gas station. You are smoking a Marlboro Menthol. You sip at a Miller High Life.

You have everything you need. Who cares about luxuries when the entire world is your toy?

All the while, you type away at an old laptop computer, writing the script for a play that will eventually be produced as a movie called "Hard Candy," which you decide will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2005, and will be based on today's events. You already have the entire script and subsequent screenplay composed in your head; you finished them both before you reached the bottom of Shay's ladder. The slowest part of the process is getting it all down. If you could only type faster, you could get so much more done.

Once the scripts are complete, you will have the workers implant them into the writers you have already selected, and see to it that the projects are greenlit, but not too quickly as to arouse suspicion.

Your Outlook beeps, and you check your email. The arrived message's subject line reads, "Code 2481 - SN D1148293499."

It takes you less than 30 seconds to read the entire message, which is over 3000 words long. In a fit, you throw the beer against the wall, and the bottle shatters. It is not The Killer in you that is mad; for the first time in many years, it is the Ubermensch that is half-blind with rage.

You purse your lips and pull up a browser. You type an IP address into the address bar; the browser displays a simple database query line and a password prompt, nothing else. You type the serial number, and a 64-character password, and hit enter.

A photograph and a detailed dossier on drone 1,148,293,499, Samuel James Henreid, appears.

You read the dossier and pick up the phone, dialing a number from memory only to be used in emergencies.

The phone doesn't even ring once before a male voice answers. "Unit two," he says.

"This is God," you say.

"Yes, God. Standing by."

"This is a D.E.D." you growl.

A D.E.D. is shorthand for a "Drop Everything Directive". There is a click on the other end of the line. "And we are now recording," the man says.

You continue. "Listen carefully; we're going to need to leverage assets in the Mossad, the Israeli military, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda. We'll need to adjust the programming of several thousand people in New York City, and have three weeks to do it. I'll want a twenty minute telephone call with the President of the United States as soon as this call is completed; I don't care where he is or what he's doing."

You lay out your plan over the next ninety minutes. When you are finished, you announce completion of the D.E.D. to the man on the telephone, who merely says, "Understood," and hangs up.

You close your eyes for a long moment, and sigh heavily. When you are done calming down, you proceed to pick up the remnants of the glass bottle with your bare fingers, cutting them lightly in the process, and toss the shards of glass in the waste basket.

As if on cue, your cell phone rings. The area code is 202, Washington, D.C.

 **O-O-O**

It is June 5th, 2001. It is 2:27PM, local time. Your name is Sam Henreid. You are 47 years old.

Your name is Sam Henreid, and you are sweating in the sweltering desert of southern Tunesia.

Your name is Sam Henreid, and a man has just handed you $50 million in Swiss bearer bonds in two attaché cases.

Your companion, Colonel Jefferson Wells, USMC, stands at the edge of an airstrip, a C-130 cargo plane parked nearby, and hands an arab man a Haliburton armored metal attaché. Through an interpreter, he says, "Forty vials of airborne, weaponized Ebola, courtesy of the United States government."

The man that takes the case turns and walks to the back of a white Mercedes-Benz, and places it in the trunk.

"Remember our arrangement," Wells says through the Al-Qaeda interpreter. "This weapon is not to be used in the western hemisphere, or against NATO, the United States, or their allies. China or India are fine."

The cell leader that has handed you the money nods and smiles. "That's exactly where we intend on using it," he says through the interpreter.

Behind you, and out of earshot, ten Marine sharpshooters have their weapons trained on the proceedings. If they knew what was really going on, you have no doubt that they would kill everyone present, and probably receive Congressional Medals of Honor for stopping a global pandemic that is likely never to end.

Colonel Wells agrees with your ideology, that American hegemony must be protected at all costs, and that India and China represent a clear and present danger to that hegemony. The $50 million doesn't exactly hurt, either.

You are an investment banker by day, and Wells had access to the weapon. You brokered the deal through your contacts in the middle east, specifically the Saudi Arabian royal family, and now here you are, standing in the middle of hell itself.

The arabs get into their car and drive off. You and your companion get back into the plane with your armed escorts, which takes off for a NATO base in Sicily. From there, you will head to Montreal, where you will meet with your contact, who will launder the money and place the bulk of it, minus his fee, into a pair of Credit Suisse accounts. One for you, and one for the Colonel.

 **O-O-O**

Over an hour later, as the Mercedes-Benz speeds across a desert road towards Tunis, the leader of the Al-Qaeda cell, a man named Mohammed Al-Bazir, hangs up his satellite phone after a brief conversation.

He smiles at the sheer lethality of the weapon in the trunk. After unleashing the virus in several cities in India, allowing the Taliban to take over Pakistan and then invade Kashmir without intervention, they would set off the weapon in every oil-producing nation in the world, strangling the global oil supply. Also on the list were New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, three of the largest cities in the United States. It was only fair that the Americans suffer at the hands of the weapon they themselves designed.

And then, of course, there was Israel to consider…

Without warning, the front tires of the vehicle blow out, and the car is sent careening into a ditch, where it rolls over. As the Benz flips, Al-Bazir can see several black armored vehicles laying in wait beyond the ditch, with over a dozen men in biohazard suits and machine guns in position.

"!לפתוח באש"

The Mossad Colonel in charge of the strike team barks the order, and the men all open fire, turning the Benz into a very expensive, and very inoperable, block of Swiss cheese. The car quickly catches on fire and begins to burn. After expelling over 1,000 rounds of ammunition, the Mossad strike team falls back to their vehicles and gets on the road.

After twenty minutes have passed, and the vehicles have reached minimum safe distance, the Colonel gets on the radio to report.

".הגענו מרחק מינימלי בטוח .שחרר את הנשק"

Fifty miles to the east, an Israeli F-15 Strike Eagle releases a tactical nuclear weapon, the navigator guiding the weapon onto the vehicle with perfect precision; the weapon detonates ten meters above the Benz, vaporizing it and sterilizing the entire area with a 100-kiloton blast.

The Mossad team, still speeding down the desert road, sees the flash, and know that their job has been completed without flaw. All that is required now is to spend a month in isolated quarantine to ensure that they are not carrying Ebola, after which they will all receive medals, personally delivered by the Prime Minister of Israel.

The Colonel looks out the back of his vehicle at the mushroom cloud rising into the sky and prays to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that this will be the last time he ever sees one with his own eyes.

O-O-O

It is June 8th, 2001. Your name is Sam Henreid.

Your name is Sam Henreid, and you are sitting in a café in Montreal, Canada, waiting for your contact.

After approximately fifteen minutes, a gentleman in a Gucci business suit sits down across from you. Under the table, you slide the two attaché cases across to him. "Same arrangement; Credit Suisse. The account numbers are in each of the two cases."

"Got it," says the man in a French accent.

"While we're at it," you joke, "would you kindly do this job for free?"

The man pauses for a moment, a look of confusion on his face. Then he smiles. "Of course. It would be my honor."

You are even more confused than your contact appeared to be a moment ago. "Then while we're on the subject, would you kindly transfer ninety percent of your liquid assets into the account ending in 296?"

"Of course," the man says, still smiling.

 _{Damned odd,}_ you think, then stand up to leave.

"Would you kindly do anything and everything I tell you?" you ask.

"Absolutely," the man says without hesitation.

Piqued, you think for a moment. "Thirty seconds after I leave the restaurant, pat your head while rubbing your belly for fifteen seconds."

"Sure." He looks down at his watch, looking up occasionally to see if you have left yet.

You walk away, and out the door. You step into the warm air of the Canadian summer afternoon, and watch the man through the glass of the café's window, as he begins to pat his head while rubbing his belly for exactly fifteen seconds, then gathers the attaché cases and walks out of the establishment.

You fly back to New York City.

 **O-O-O**

Three days later, you are sitting at your computer on the 96th floor of The North Tower of the World Trade Center, gaping at the screen. Rather than $22.5 million being deposited into your account, the full $25 million has been deposited, along with an additional $127.9 million.

 _Would you kindly?_

Was it possible?

You pick up your telephone and call Colonel Wells's cell phone.

He answers, agitated. "I told you never to call me," he says. "Use the standard method, or don't contact me at all."

"Sorry," you say. "Did you see your deposit?"

"I did," he says. "But I thought Cardinal was taking ten percent. I received the full amount."

"I made an arrangement," you tell him. "Would you kindly deposit the full amount into my account?"

A pause. "Sure."

You can feel a growing hardness between your legs. You don't understand how this can possibly be happening, but it is. You give Colonel Wells your Credit Suisse account number.

"Now, would you kindly do anything and everything I tell you to?"

Again, "Sure."

"Good. Once the transfer is complete, close your account, and forget about the money; don't contact me unless you need another deal, or unless there is an emergency," you say. You then hang up.

Within an hour, an additional $25 million has been deposited into your account.

You then call Stacey Mills, the prettiest admin in the office. "Would you kindly tell your boss you are sick, and take the rest of the day off?"

"I can do that," she says. "Give me a minute."

"Before you go, would you kindly come into my office when you've spoken to Jeff?"

"Sure."

Five minutes later, Stacey comes into your office. "I'm just about to go home sick for the day, Sam. What do you need?"

"I need you to love me," you tell her.

She blanches. "If you're lucky, I won't report you for sexual harassment, Sam. Who the fuck do you think you are?"

You recover quickly as she marches towards the door. "Would you kindly stop?" She does.

"Would you kindly love me? Would you kindly accompany me back to my home and make love to me until I tell you to leave? Would you kindly do anything and everything I tell you to?"

Stacey's face softens. She beams at you. "I do love you, Sam. I… I just never knew you felt that way about me. Of course."

You smile savagely.

It's going to be an interesting day, and it's going to be an even more interesting week.

 **O-O-O**

Seven days later, you sit in your office, looking over your personal net worth, which has swelled to over a billion dollars. You have taken over the minds of everyone at Chester-Waterhouse, and begun to weave tendrils of control to the adjacent floors. You glance over at the sofa opposite your desk, where Stacey and Melissa are kissing and fondling each other passionately for your amusement.

Your secretary brings in the next five people. A couple of them look back at the display on your sofa, with evident discomfort.

"Good," you say. "My name is Sam Henreid. Would you kindly all do anything and everything I ask without question, and do anything you are asked to do that directly benefits me?" you ask them.

They all nod or voice their assent, their faces softening to smiles.

"Good. I need you each to pass copies of your Rolodexes and your corporate directories to my secretary before the end of the day."

After each confirming that it will be handled immediately, you bid them to leave.

You add another five names to your spreadsheet. In five months, you will control everyone in both towers, by which time you will be the wealthiest man in the world, and then you can turn your eyes towards the political world. In the meantime, you have Cardinal making daily runs shuttling between New York City and Montreal.

When you're ready, one television broadcast from the Oval Office and you'll control over half the country. And from there, the world.

It's as though God has smiled upon you.

 **O-O-O**

In a café in Montreal, Delilah Hanson takes a pair of attaché cases from Cardinal with a huge smile on her face, then steps across the street to the local branch of Credit Suisse.

The branch manager approaches at her appearance. "Another deposit today, ma'am?"

 **O-O-O**

It is August 24th, 2001. Your name is Keith Sudekis. You are 32 years old.

Your name is Keith Sudekis, and you are on a flight from New York City to Montreal, Canada.

Your name is Keith Sudekis, and you are sitting in first class behind the global money laundering magnate known only as Cardinal.

Your codename is Pyramid 6.

Pyramid 4 and Pyramid 5 had tracked a global shift in the investment banking industry, and swiftly learned that someone was draining the accounts of some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as some of the larger investment banks, and that the activity was primarily centered around the Twin Towers. At first, it was believed to be The Killer, but the Boss quickly determined that this was completely outside the standard operating methods of The Killer; evidence of mind control was plainly there, as evinced by the reactions of the victims during interrogation, but this Killer – a second Killer – was obsessed not with murder, not with irony, but solely with money and control. During a conference call, the task force was almost panicked at the idea that the power attributed to The Killer seemed to be somehow spreading, but it was reasoned that an interrogation of Cardinal, who was clearly in play in this scenario, might yield valuable information about the case.

Assuming he could talk at all. You have a hefty dose of sodium pentathol in your breast pocket to loosen his tongue.

Cardinal exits the airport and gets into a cab. You get into the cab behind it, saying, "Follow that car." You smile at the cliché.

Twenty-three minutes later, both taxis stop outside a café across from the Credit Suisse branch in Montreal. You follow Cardinal inside and take up a seat where you can observe him. He pulls out his cell phone and dials a number, speaking briefly.

Five minutes later, a fat, dumpy woman enters the café and sits down at Cardinal's table. Without a word, Cardinal leaves, neglecting to take the cases with him.

Piqued, you follow the woman across the street to Credit Suisse. She goes up to a teller as you enter the establishment. "You're new here, aren't you?" the fat woman asks the teller.

"Yes, I am," the woman says. "I transferred here today."

"Have you ever been to as have not the fourth?" the fat woman asks her.

"Excuse me?" the teller seems confused.

"I'm Emilline Ana," the fat woman says, offering her hand.

The woman goes to shake it. As you watch, dumbfounded, the fat woman, which you realize with dawning horror is the target of your main investigation, The Killer herself, slowly moves the woman's hand to her forehead as she speaks in soothing, low tones too quiet for you to hear from this distance. You know enough about hypnosis from your investigation of The Killer to know the Handshake Induction Method when you see it. You pull out your cell phone and dial a number.

"Pyramid 3," says a woman on the other end.

"This is Pyramid 6. Get word to the Boss. This case is connected to the original investigation of The Killer. She just took down someone right in front of my very eyes. I'm tailing her now."

"What?" asks Pyramid 3, incredulous. "What does she look like?"

"Hold on." You take a photograph as the woman calling herself "Emilline" turns around, and send it. She is still too far away for the image to be clear, but it's something. In a short while, hopefully, you'll have more. You'll have The Killer's head on a stick. "Gotta go, she's walking towards me. Call when I can." You hang up, and put away your cell phone.

You follow Delilah outside and down the street, and watch as she enters a hotel at the end of the block. You run to catch up with her, and enter the lobby as she approaches the bank of elevators, sprinting as you reach your hand into your jacket to pull out your automatic, an all-plastic affair with plastic bullets that lets you travel anywhere with it on you.

"Tourniquet plunger!" the woman screams, and everyone in the lobby stops what they are doing and stands stock still. In one fluid motion, she whips her hand out of her purse and levels a Glock at you. No one around you seems to notice.

"Take your hand out of your jacket, slowly," she says.

You pull out your pistol and hold it harmlessly away from you.

"Drop it to the ground and kick it over to me," she says. You comply.

She steps up to you after picking up the weapon and putting it in her purse. She switches the pistol to her left hand and orders you to hold out your hand. You refuse. "I'm not about to turn into one of your puppets," you say.

"Hold out your hand, or I'll blow your fucking brains out," she says, pressing the barrel of the Glock against your forehead. With a sigh, you hold out your right hand.

That's the last thing that happens until you wake up in a room in the hotel the following morning.

You don't remember anything after getting off the plane, but you know you've been compromised. You can feel it. You pick up your cell phone and dial again.

"Pyramid 3," says the woman.

"Pyramid 6," you say, hopelessly.

"Six," she says, a hint of franticness in her voice. "You were tailing The Killer. What happened?"

That confirms it. "I lost her," you begin, then halt. "She got into a cab and I lost her in traffic."

You know you don't remember these things, but you can't warn Pyramid 6. You pull out your Mathevre, toying with the gun as you begin to cry. "I've been compromised. I'm sorry, Suki. Tell the Boss I'm sorry. I've failed."

"Come back in, Six. We can still help you," she says.

A stab of panic shoots through you. That's exactly what The Killer wants, you reason. "Tell him I'm sorry. Goodbye, Suki," you say, and drop the cell phone. You place the barrel of the weapon between your lips and aim for the roof of your mouth, then pull the trigger.

 **O-O-O**

It is August 26th, 2001. Your alias is Delilah Hanson.

Your alias is Delilah Hanson, and you scream in rage as you kick over the television in your hotel room in Montreal, a run-down affair on the west end of downtown.

You were sloppy. You had a perfect chance to take out Pyramid, and you blew it. Worst of all, you let them get a photograph of you. A shitty photograph, but a photograph nonetheless. That wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if you hadn't fucked up.

You were unprepared, and you had made critical, elementary mistakes. "SLOPPY!" you scream. "FUCKING SLOPPY! GOD DAMNIT!"

You forgot to tell Keith Sudekis not to notice anything was amiss. You forgot to tell him he would be unable to kill himself. And now, here was his face, plastered all over the news, an apparent suicide.

"FUCK!" you flip the mattress onto the floor and kick it several times for good measure. How could you have made such an obvious mistake?

You collapse to the floor, heaving and panting. You bury your face in your hands. When your panting calms down to sighs, you muse to yourself, "Well, nobody's perfect, I guess." You smirk at this.

You pull out your cell phone and dial a number from memory.

"Unit 2," says the man's voice.

"This is God," you're in no mood, but protocol is protocol, and you have a limited window here. You cross your legs and lay back on the floor of the hotel room, thinking quickly.

"Yes, God. Standing by."

"This is a D.E.D." you say.

A click. "And we are now recording."

 **O-O-O**

It is September 11th, 2001. It is 8:07AM. Your name is Sam Henreid.

Your name is Sam Henreid, and you watch as six of the female admins lie on the floor of your office, naked, as they engage in an orgy for your amusement.

Your name is Sam Henreid, and you have amassed over $536 billion, and without anyone the wiser, are by far the wealthiest man in the world. You also control nearly 3,000 people in both towers of the World Trade Center. Tonight you will fly to Washington, and go on the air with the President of the United States, a man you have known since you were both teenagers, and utter the words "Would you kindly?" to the nation. It is all finally about to begin.

You tear your eyes away from the floor show and log into your Credit Suisse account. Your mouth drops open as the website informs you that all the money has been withdrawn from your account, and the account closed. In a rage, you reach for your cell phone, but at that moment, your secretary comes in, followed by two men in cheap suits.

"Mister Henreid, these are Detectives Dante and Powell from the NYPD," she says, and turns to leave.

One of the detectives flashes his gold badge, ignoring the orgy at his feet, as though no one is there. "Sam Henreid, please stand up, turn around, and place your hands behind your back. You are under arrest."

You laugh. "Would you kindly go back to your station, forget you saw me this morning, and arrange for your district attorney to call me in my office immediately?"

The detective smirks. "Funny guy, huh? Stand up and follow my instructions, or you will be charged with resisting arrest, Henreid."

It didn't work. Your money is gone, and the Words didn't work. What the fuck is happening? You stand, and a pair of handcuffs is placed around your wrists as you are read your Miranda rights. "What am I being charged with?" you ask, helplessly, as you are led towards the elevators.

"Fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. Once we charge you, I'm sure the FBI will take jurisdiction, but until then, you're all ours. Now keep moving," Dante says as he pushes you forward again.

A half an hour later, you are practically shoved into an otherwise empty holding tank, and the door is locked behind you. You stare out the barred window at the Twin Towers.

After several minutes, the pay phone in the cell rings. You stare at it for a few seconds, then walk the ten feet from the window and pick it up.

"Hello?" you ask.

There is a woman's voice on the other end. "Sam Henreid?"

The hair stands up on the back of your neck and on your arms. "Yes?"

"Would you kindly look out the window?"

You turn, and look at the towers. "Who is this?" you ask in a hoarse whisper.

There is a slight chuckle from the other end. "I wanted to let you know that I had the Ebola you sold intercepted. Al-Qaeda was planning on using it on the United States, among other places, including Israel. You would have caused a real mess, and I'm afraid I can't allow that. You've been a very, very naughty boy."

"Who is this?" you repeat, terrified. A plane, a large jet airliner, from the looks of it, comes into view, headed for the towers.

"I. Am. GOD!" she yells the last word as the airliner strikes the north tower, approximately in the same area of your office.

You drop the telephone receiver as you scream, imagining your lovers and your coworkers alike, obliterated by the impact as the jet disintegrates through the building, leaving a fireball on all sides as the fuel inside the wings ignites.

 **O-O-O**

As the towers burn, and the majority of the workers inside the towers attempt to evacuate, all those taken over by Sam Henreid sit at their desks, carrying out his directives. They make no attempt to leave as the fires rage around them. Even as they burn they continue to work, making no effort to save themselves.

 **O-O-O**

Your name is George W. Bush. You are 55 years old.

Your name is George W. Bush, and you are the 43rd, and current President of the United States of America.

Your name is George W. Bush, and you are sitting in a school classroom, listening to a class of African-American second graders as they are given a reading lesson by their teacher at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida.

As you listen to the children read "The Pet Goat," your Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, steps up to you and whispers into your ear. "New York City is under attack," he says simply.

Your first impulse is to leap to your feet, make your apologies, and leave the room, to get a briefing over the phone from the Situation Room as you make your way back to Air Force One, but you find you cannot move. Instead, you look around the classroom and smile at the students. Ten feet away, a bank of reporters, cameramen, and photographers record the event for posterity. It was determined that this would make a good photo op for the press, and dominate the news cycle for the day.

You want to act, but you can't. You are terrified at your inability to do anything but act composed and interested in the children, but you can't show it. A woman's voice speaks in your mind, a voice you somehow know you have heard before.

 _{Your country is being punished, Mister President. Your childhood friend, Sam Henreid, and your pals in the Saudi Arabian Royal Family have attempted to cause a global pandemic with weapons that your country created. I stopped them. But there will be vengeance. You will spend the next six minutes doing nothing, and your critics will forever remember them as "The Seven Minutes of Silence," seven minutes that will live in infamy. You will sit and listen to me, while New York City burns.}_

Idly, you pick up a copy of the book and follow along, listening to the voice in abject fear. You are under some kind of mind control, and if you are, that means that a lot of other people are, too. You know instinctively that there is nothing that you can do about it, and that you will be made to forget this experience as soon as it is over.

 _{Your presidency will end with a financial calamity, as I have siphoned over a half a trillion dollars from the American economy. The resulting financial collapse will eventually lead to the end of democracy in your country, to the end of The United States as you know it. That will be your legacy. But more than anything, these seven minutes will be the thing you will be most remembered for, a buffoonish display of indifference as people are dying. Enjoy the ride; things are only going to get worse from here.}_

Andrew Card steps up to you again after a few minutes, "Sir, don't you think that we should vacate, for your safety, if nothing else? The nation is under attack; you could be at risk," he whispers into your ear again. Instead, you do nothing as you listen to the voice in your mind. You turn the page of the book, following along with the students.

You wait patiently until the lesson is over, and question the teacher and the students about their reading skills and about the lesson. "Do they read more than they watch TV?" you ask.

"Of course," the teacher, Miss Daniels beams.

Your experience with the voice in your mind is gone, as if it was never there. You decide to wrap things up. There is a crisis, and you have a job to do.

 **O-O-O**

From his office in the outer ring of the Pentagon, the "E" ring, Colonel Jefferson Wells sips his coffee and quirks a brow as he hears the sound of a jet outside, a sound getting louder and louder. He stands and steps to the window, looking outside at a jet airliner that is heading straight for his office.

He drops his coffee cup. Wells is dead before it hits the floor.

Meanwhile, in her apartment in Tribeca, Manhattan, Suki stares at the television screen, coffee cup in her hands, as tears roll down her face. This is the work of The Killer, she just knows it. Pyramid was so close to catching her, and now, this is the result. She wonders if this event would have been prevented if Six had managed to kill her in Montreal.

She swears that she will put an end to The Killer, if it is the last thing she ever does.

 **O-O-O**

In the end, on September 13th, 2001, Sam Henreid is released for lack of evidence, as all the witnesses and evidence against him had gone up in flames as the Twin Towers collapsed on that fateful day, and Sam hurried home to find the locks changed, and all his accounts drained of money. To his shock and horror, he was unable to find anyone to hire him, or even take him in, as though everyone knew his secret behind his back and were punishing him, and in a matter of days, he is relegated to panhandling for change in his $5,000 business suit in Battery Park.

"Would you kindly help me?" he asks each passerby, and while some do, most ignore him. He has lost his power, a power loaned to him by "God," whoever She was. He makes enough to keep himself fed, but not much else. He curses his existence; he had had the world in his hands, and now he had lost it all.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, he muses to himself bitterly.

 **O-O-O**

It is May 23rd, 2016, and Suki- Pyramid 3- steps out of her Tribeca apartment and walks towards Battery Park to get another look at the Statue of Liberty. Of course, today she has an additional purpose as she heads south.

Sam Henreid, for his part, still stands by the War Memorial, begging for change. "Would you kindly help me?" he asks a Millennial hipster as he passes.

The young man smiles. "Hey, just like in _Bioshock_. Sure, I can spot you five bucks," he says, and reaches into his pocket, pulling out his cash. He pulls out a $5 bill and puts it in the battered cup the man uses for his day's bounty, and continues on his way. "Your wish is my command," he says as he wanders off, laughing, towards the harbor.

Next is a Japanese woman in a smart, black outfit, complete with a leather miniskirt. A black Coach shoulder bag bounces against her leather-clad hip as she walks.

"Would you kindly help me?" he asks her as she walks past.

She stops, looking confused for a second. She turns to him. "Of course I can help you. What do you need?" she asks him.

His eyes narrow. "I need money, anything you can spare," he says.

She opens her purse and pulls out her wallet, then stuffs over a thousand dollars into his cup. "I can get you more, if you need it," she says.

Could it be? Could it really be possible?

"Would you kindly do anything and everything I ask you to?" he says, trying to hide his enthusiasm.

She smiles. "Of course. I would be happy to," she says.

"Take me back to your place and clean me up, for starters," he growls.

She takes his hand and leads him north. "I have a hotel room nearby. Let's get you some new clothes, while we're at it, after you've bathed. I can have something simple delivered before we get you some nice clothing; you'd be turned away from any stores I would take you to in what you're wearing now."

"What is your name?" he asks her.

Without looking back at him, she simply says, "Suki," while leading him by the hand. She takes him to the sixth floor of the Roxy Tribeca Hotel and draws a bath in the Roman Jacuzzi tub as she begins to undress him. When he is naked, she asks him to turn around so she can put the white terrycloth bathrobe on him.

He turns, and Suki immediately wraps a piano-wire garrote around his neck and pulls the handles, hard. The wire cuts into his skin, and he desperately tries to get his fingers under it, but he cannot.

Within minutes, she releases him, and he slides dead to the floor, a ring of red blood dripping from around his neck. She proceeds to place his cup, and all the money from within it, into her purse, then pulls out her cell phone, dialing a number from memory.

"Lawman," says the Boss through his voice disguiser.

"Pyramid 3," she says. "It's done."

"Good," he says. "Get on a plane for Milwaukee as soon as possible. The other agents are already in place, and waiting for you to arrive and assist them. There's a private room in the penthouse suite for you, as well as a suite of rooms for our target, once we find him. Pack for a long trip," he says.

"Yes, sir," she says simply, and he hangs up.

Next stop, Milwaukee, and after she has arrived, all she has to do is find Marcus, and with him, the identity and whereabouts of The Killer.

 **(Author's Note: Fans of the film "Hard Candy" will notice that the rooftop scene at the beginning of this Stave is an almost word-for-word recreation of the climactic scene from that film, with my own spin on it. In the original book that this story is based upon, the author shared that Hard Candy was a monument to one of her victims, the only time that he reported ever hearing about one of Delilah's victims.)**

 **(Only one more Stave left. I hope you've enjoyed this tale, and hope you are especially delighted by the ending.)**


	6. Stave 6: Marcus

**[Disclaimer: While the original author of Tales of the Ubermensch: Hack -dot- World maintains with absolute assurance that the character of Delilah Hanson (also known as "The Killer," and the Übermensch), is based on a real and terrifyingly dangerous person, and some elements of this story are rooted in supposedly true events, this story is a work of fiction.]**

 **[To read more about real tales of the real Übermensch, please visit the following website:]**

 **[www talesoftheubermensch dot com]**

 **[Trigger Warning: This story contains depictions of murder, as well as adult situations and references to child molestation.]**

 **Tales of the Übermensch: The Series**  
 **Stave 6: Marcus**

 **Prologue**

It is Wednesday, February 27th, 2002. It is 9:49PM.

I am sitting at my dining room table. There is a smile on my face.

I am smiling at the woman who sits across from me.

I don't know her, but I think I do. I've never seen her before in my life, but it doesn't even cross my mind to question what is going on. After all, this woman is a close friend; I've known her for years and years. I should be alarmed that I don't know her name, but I'm not.

"Marcus, we're going to play a game."

I am happy; I've been a devotee of mind control erotica for over a decade, but I've never really been able to talk to anyone about my fetish before. The feeling is freeing. I've been searching for someone to share these fantasies all my adult life, it seems. When I was 13 years old, I tried self-hypnosis as a self improvement tool, using an article in the Readers Digest as a guide, but nothing really happened. Hypnosis is a lie; it doesn't really work, it's just stage show nonsense. I know this to be true.

Mind control is nothing but fiction, but it's fun to fantasize.

"Imagine," she tells me, "that not only do you have the power to control the minds of people, but that you have the power to alter the minds of everyone in the world simultaneously. What's the first thing you would do?"

I consider for a moment. This game is exciting. At first, I think of the dark, sexual fantasies at the heart of most of the mind control erotica I read, but this is different. This is altering mankind as a whole. This is a bigger picture.

"I would make it impossible for any person to harm any other person in any way, making crime and war impossible," I say with a grin. That's a good, good answer. Well done.

The woman sitting across from me is thoughtful. "And what would you do about people already in prisons?"

The answer is instant and obvious to me. "I'd set them all free. They wouldn't be able to harm anyone anymore, so there's really no point in punishing them; it doesn't matter what they did before, just what they became after."

The woman nods. "And then what would you do?"

This one takes a little while. "I'd make everyone feel happiness."

"And then?"

I take in a sharp breath as I search for the answer.

It's just a game, but I want to do this right. How does one shape a perfect world?

 **O-O-O**

It is Thursday, July 21st, 2016. It is 11:57AM.

I am 45 years old.

My name is Marcus Lee Jones, and I sit in the summer sun, my skin burned a bright red.

It is a hot Milwaukee day, and I am sitting by my beloved blue tent in a homeless settlement down by the Milwaukee Art Museum.

I was one of the first to settle here; over the last few years, the population of our tent city has swelled into the thousands, and from what I am told, all the county parks are like this.

At first it was a recession. Then they called it The Great Recession. For a while, things appeared to be getting better, as America tried to spend its way out of the horrible predicament it was in, but when other nations stopped extending us credit, we spiraled down into the Second Great Depression. Now everyone's thrown in the towel and dubbed it The Great Collapse.

The entire world is like this, now.

Sometimes, the church groups that keep us fed let us use cell phones to call our loved ones, or bring us newspapers. As an adult, I was never big on reading, but since the beginning of this calamity, I've devoured all the news I could get my hands on.

I have to. This entire situation is my fault. That's what The Killer told me, anyway.

Because I was a wicked, selfish person. Because I did something to hurt a woman intentionally, in her presence. Because she asked me what era I'd least like to live in, and my first answer after "post-apocalyptic" was "an economic depression." Because I did something unforgivable when I was a child. And this is my punishment, to watch her tear the world apart, the world I loved and had so much hope for. I am sitting, doing a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel crossword puzzle. Number 7-down, seventeen letters. The clue is "Dystopian Philip K. Dick novel." That's easy: "The World Jones Made." I grimace and put away the folded newspaper.

She's fucking with me. Again.

For a while I look out over Lake Michigan in silence, and relish the cool breeze against my burned, fair skin. All that hard work, all that status seeking, and only in my destitution do I finally acquire that lakefront property I'd so desired. In the distance, a siren begins to wail, long and shrill. Milwaukee may have over 60 percent unemployment, but it is still at its heart a blue collar town. This is the lunch siren. It is noon, precisely, and my eyes turn to the new wing of the MAM. The Quadracci Pavilion, completed in 2001 and designed by Santiago Calatrava, is essentially a giant kinetic sculpture. As it does every day at this time, it closes its huge "wings" once, then slowly opens them again. I call this futuristic white building "The Dove."

I love the art museum. When I worked downtown as an IT administrator, I would often spend my lunch breaks there. Today, I still go every Free Admission Monday. The place is often noisy on those days, clogged as it is with the homeless trying to get out of the freezing winter weather or the blistering summer sun. Most of the privileged, those fortunate enough to have jobs, homes, and cars, are wise enough to stay away on these days, but there are always those who make the mistake of taking in the sights with the great unwashed, glaring at us for the nauseating smell of sweat and fear that bakes off of us in waves.

Go fuck yourself, lady. If I had a shower like you do, I'd use it, too.

The Dove contains all the traveling installations, the premium content. In my more successful days, I used to be a donor, and thus got in for free, but those without an MAM membership have to pay for these exhibitions. I have no money, but the staff lets me in anyway: I had a spectacular breakdown in front of the ticket collector once, years ago, with half a dozen staff members watching on as I tearfully begged her to let me in to see a Rodin exhibit. I needed to see with my own eyes that beauty still existed in the world, I told her. I needed to see that the world hadn't completely fallen to shit.

The director, who was within earshot, could see that I wasn't there for the air conditioning, and took pity on me. I'm kind of their charity case now. Sometimes, one of the staff will come down and find me to personally invite me to a musical exhibition they are giving for the big donors. I have to stay in the back, well away from the paying guests in their tuxedos and cocktail dresses, and they won't let me anywhere near the buffet, but I don't mind. The world still spins, and there is still beauty, and culture, and joy in the world.

And sometimes, I am still fortunate enough to experience it.

Every time I go, I always visit my favorite installation. In the modern art wing there lies a simple, open suitcase upon the floor. Some people just look at the suitcase from a distance and walk away, but for those that take the time and approach it, there is more to be found. At the bottom of the suitcase is an iron sewer grate, and several feet below lies rippling water, rocks, coral, and plants, as if there was a lagoon below the floor. This always seems to delight everyone who sees it, but it is not the real mystery of the piece.

Most people who approach the suitcase look down, are impressed with the originality, and walk away. But I was stunned by this installation, and walked around it, between the open lid of the case and the wall, to get a better look. And there, for the amazement of only those who truly took their time and studied the piece, was the real mystery: two pairs of legs and feet, those of a man, and an infant, leaving one to imagine a father holding his child in front of him, just barely dangling the child's feet above the water.

This piece doesn't even have a title, but it is the most important thing I have left, my favorite thing in the whole world. As I admire it, people come and go, and I tell every one of them to walk around, and look more closely.

Sometimes, all you need is a different perspective, and your very understanding of the world will change.

And whenever someone thanks me for illuminating this mystery for them, I think of Delilah, and the gasp of delight she gave at seeing the feet below. It was the second, and probably last time that I surprised her.

I haven't seen her in eight years. Eight long, agonizing years of suffering.

And that suffering has been made all the worse by my understanding of the masks she wears, and the living God that dwells beneath them. She allowed me to remember, all a part of her plan to punish me, to make me live with more guilt and regret than any man has ever had to bear.

I am the heart of the biggest art installation in the world. I am The Killer's masterpiece.

I pour some water from a plastic gallon jug I got from the relief workers from Trinity Lutheran onto a washcloth and lie back, covering my abused and broiled face with it. On the wind, I think I hear someone calling my name.

Then I hear it again. I'm sure, this time. It's distant, but getting closer. I don't stir. Whoever it is will get here eventually.

"Marcus Jones? I'm looking for a Marcus Jones!" the voice calls out over and over again, growing louder.

Finally, it's close. One of my neighbors must be pointing at me, because I hear a familiar voice tell him, "The crazy guy in the blue tent over here."

I roll my washcloth to halfway up my nose. "I can hear you, Mary!"

"Sorry, hon," she replies. "You know I mean it in a good way."

Sure you do. I say nothing.

A few seconds later, a shadow covers my face. "You're Marcus Jones."

The washcloth still over my eyes, I reply, "I am."

"Can I see your wrist, please?"

I know the one he means. The left one. I roll up my sleeve and show him the inside of my wrist, where I have a tattoo of a _Bioshock_ wrist chain. It is my first ink, which I received under duress. It represents my enslavement to Delilah, and was placed in the game specifically for me.

"This is Matsuda. Sector 2. I have him."

That gets my attention. I pull the damp washcloth off my face and look up. "Matsuda? Like in _Death Note_?"

A Caucasian man in his late 30s, with brown hair marred by only the barest hint of grey, crouches down next to me. He is of average height and fairly slender, wearing a white shirt with a red tie. "It's a codename. I'm with a task force that's searching for The Killer. I was wondering if you'd come with us and answer a few questions."

I am stunned. Nobody has ever believed me. Not like this. "You mean the task force is really real? That wasn't bullshit?"

"Matsuda" smiles. "Nope."

"And 'L'?"

"Well, we call him 'Boss', but yeah, he's real, too."

Somewhere, deep inside, and completely unbeknownst to me, my programming clicks. An If/Then statement closes. "But why do you call yourself 'Matsuda'?"

The man stands and waves both of his arms to catch the attention of a stocky man in a suit and an Asian woman with flaming red hair wearing a black bustier and mini-skirt. Both are picking their way between the dense network of tents, moving slowly in our general direction.

Matsuda's phone chirps, and a voice issues from it. "This is Aizawa, Sector 7. It's going to take me, like, an hour to get to you at this rate. Can we just call Watari for pickups?"

Another chirp, "Ide here in Sector 9. I'm at _least_ an hour away. They're packed in here like sardines and I have to step over people to get anywhere."

Matsuda hits his push-to-talk. "Agreed. I've got Mogi and Suki almost here. Aizawa, make your way back to Lincoln Memorial Drive. Watari, can you be at the Sector 2 dropoff point in ten minutes?

"Affirmative." The voice is gruff, wizened, with a British accent. "The Boss is very happy. Good work, Matsuda."

Matsuda crouches down again. "To answer your question, each member of the task force in _Death Note_ is based on a real life member of the real investigation team. I'm the youngest, Aizawa is the only one with a wife and kids, and so on."

My eyes turn to the approaching couple, the woman in particular, who is slender, petite, and beautiful. "And Suki is Misa-Misa, I'm assuming?"

The woman takes off her sunglasses. "Aiber and Wedy, actually. Or so we think, anyway. Maybe a little Misa-Misa for the way I dress. It's not like we can ask The Killer for clarification."

Mogi pulls out a digital camera and begins taking pictures of me, my tent, and describes a slow circle with his camera, snapping pictures of the entire horizon; they wanted to document how I lived, even what my view was.

"Why and when did you settle here?" Mogi asks.

I consider for a moment. "Well, the Fredrickson-Keene Act of 2012 had just gone into effect- that's the Wisconsin law allowing homeless settlement in public parks. Anyway, I was just about out of money, my condo was being foreclosed, my leased car was already being sought for repossession, and it wasn't too hard to see that I was going to end up on the streets. No one would hire me, and the shelters had a waiting list a year long. So, I drove to the Gander Mountain store in Hales Corners and bought myself a bedroll, a tent, and all the non-perishable food supplies I thought I could fit into it. I abandoned my home and drove myself down here with all the cash I had left."

"And you set up in this exact spot, or somewhere else?"

"Precisely here. I've been here for over four years."

"Why here? Why not some other park?"

"The lake, I guess. The lake and the art museum. It's free most Mondays."

Matsuda interrupts. "Guys, we don't want to keep everyone waiting."

Mogi grunts, and puts away his camera. "If there's anything you want to keep, now is the time to get it from your tent. You won't be coming back here."

I look at him, incredulous. "Where am I going, then?"

Suki smiles. "With us. You're the most important lead we've ever had. We'll be taking care of you from now on."

 **O-O-O**

I am standing in the Penthouse Suite at the downtown Hyatt.

I am standing in the cool, crisp air in front of a magnificent king-sized bed.

Matsuda and Watari are out buying clothes and other items I've requested, like hair clippers and a beard trimmer, razors, anti-perspirant. My hair is halfway down my back, in a ponytail, but for a decade before I became homeless, my head was shaved. I want my life back. I want things to be the way they were before I met Delilah, and that means returning to those old habits, as best I can.

I want to be able to forget what I know about the world, but that's impossible. I've grown to accept that fact.

I step to the bathroom and sigh with pleasure. There is a large Roman soaking tub with Jacuzzi jets, a two person glass shower, a double sink vanity, an electronic toilet, and a bidet.

The task force has been staying in this suite for over two months, but these rooms have remained empty; they were merely awaiting my arrival. Every day, they've scoured a different park, looking for me. Today, they, as well as I, have hit the jackpot.

For example, today, I get to use a non-chemical toilet. What a treat! They have them at the MAM, but on Mondays the line is usually over an hour long just to get in to the bathroom, so I don't bother. For the first time in years I squat over a bowl that doesn't reek of piss, shit, and Anotec.

This is the most privacy I've had in just about forever, and it makes me shudder with pleasure.

In the common room, Mogi, Ide and Aizawa are poring over my scribblings in a big binder; it's the only thing I brought with me from my tent. They had found my online journal a couple of months ago, and this had allowed them in turn to find me, but this binder, in addition to having a copy of that online missive, also included years of conjecture, theory, and a chronicle of all the petty ways in which Delilah has messed with me since I moved to the lakefront. As Mogi reads aloud, sitting in front of them is a laptop computer with a rotating pyramid on its screen.

Occasionally, a distorted, electronic voice issues from the speakers.

I can guess who is at the other end of that connection.

This is all happening so fast; despite the thrill of being rescued from my tent city and the ball-numbing boredom of alternating between sitting in front of my tent and standing in lines all day: lines for food, lines for the toilet, lines for a newspaper.

In my life, it seems, everything that happens, happens for a reason. There are no coincidences where Delilah is concerned.

I pick up a _Time_ magazine from a rack next to the toilet and begin to flip through it. President Armitage has unveiled God's "New Covenant with America." A photograph shows him standing in front of the new flag, a white cross, rimmed with blue, in a sea of red.

Makes me want to fucking puke.

I sit there for as long as it takes to read the entire magazine. It feels like coming home. I pick up a copy of _U.S. News & World Report_.

When I re-enter the bedroom, Suki is laying on the bed, watching CNN. on the nightstand is an automatic pistol. A bunch of plastic bags sit on the bed next to her.

"I'm your bodyguard, now," she explains. "I won't leave your side, and it's my job to see to it that all your needs are taken care of."

She picks up a Walgreens bag and slides off the bed. "Let's get that head shaved, shall we?"

 **O-O-O**

An hour later, I am beginning to prune in the bubbling, seething tub as Suki, nude and kneeling astride me, scrubs the dirt from under my fingernails with a small brush. It was she who removed all the hair from my head and most of my face with the clippers as I bowed over one of the sinks. Then, straddling my legs in the tub, she shaved my crown, cheeks and neck with one of those new 7-blade razors and trimmed what was left into a tight goatee. I look like a clown, with my red face and sickly white scalp, jaw, and neck, but I don't care. I look like myself again, and that's all that matters.

She takes me by the hand, pulls me into the shower with her, and begins to soap me up. She reaches down, her fingers curling around me and lathering me with a practiced hand and pulls me into a kiss. "It's going to be okay," she tells me.

It is the first time I have been touched this way in over five years of soul-crushing loneliness. I've slept with women during the winters, but that was just sleep, for warmth. I suppose we could have fucked, but nobody feels like fucking when everyone smells this bad. People had a tendency to stay away from the crazy man and his laughable stories about the penniless ex-girlfriend who rules the world.

My hands reach out and press against the wall of the shower as I moan. She kisses me again. I am a sex addict, after all. They all know this from my journal, and I have no illusions that this is anything more than a pity fuck, but I'll take it. It's been so very, very long, and this is everything I need.

She kisses the center of my chest, where Delilah made me tattoo the kanji for "damned," so many years ago. I begin to sob as Suki wraps her arms around me.

"We found John Forsyth," she tells me.

My crying halts for a moment. "You did? His real name was Kevin-"

"-Kevin Reynolds, yes, I know. He was nearly a six hundred pounds and living in a trailer park. We found him over ten years ago, an "anomaly" as we call it, once we knew what to look for. After his children were grown, she knocked him down again, and made him start gaining weight. It was horrific. He couldn't tell us anything useful, but he kept trying. It was really, really sad."

A pause.

"But that's what we do, Marc." She continues, stroking my face and bald head with the palm of her hand. "We find her victims, as we found you, and we help them however we can. The Boss is a man of considerable means."

She kisses each of my closed eyes in turn, then the tears upon my cheeks, and finally, my lips. I taste the saltiness, and for the moment at least, I feel only hope.

"Just like we're going to help you. If you assist us, you'll never have to worry about supporting yourself ever again. He's set up a trust in your name; it's already been decided."

 **O-O-O**

Later, I am eating a two-inch thick porterhouse steak in the common room as I sit in front of the laptop. The pyramid spins, and on the other end, in my imaginings, the second most intelligent person in the world studies my every action carefully.

I am wearing denim shorts, new shoes and socks, and a black polo shirt. For the first time in as long as I can remember, my underwear doesn't feel like a sodden, sweaty mess.

"So what's your codename?"

A pause from the laptop before the electronic voice chirps again. "Lawman."

I smirk. "L, Lawman. I get it. Why don't you go by 'L' now?" The steak is delicious. I have to chew on one side of my mouth due to missing teeth, though. My baked potato is slathered with butter and sour cream, and for the first time in my life, I am eating white truffles. There is something familiar about this, though, and I realize that my potato isn't the only thing being buttered up.

I remember reading an interview, years and years ago, about the Jerry Springer Show. People would play-act, it seemed, and manufacture fake drama for the show, just to be able to stay at a fancy hotel, to see their faces on TV. They'd fly you in first class, put you up for the night, bring you to the studio in a limousine...

And then, once they had what they wanted from you, they'd toss you in the back of a taxi and ship you home on a Greyhound bus.

"These idiots were actually flattered by The Killer's spoof of their lives in _Death Note_. Suki and I are not."

I shrug, and take another bite, which I wash down with champagne. "How long have you been doing this?"

A pause. "I've been protecting the world from exceptional, incredibly dangerous X-factors for thirty-five years. As a team, we've been hunting The Killer for nearly twenty, except for Matsuda, who's been with us for only the last fifteen."

"Strange that you don't have any turnover. A team this size really works for you?"

"We get a lot more done than you might expect. And we have had some turnover. Matsuda joined us because we lost a man. I guess you'd call him 'Ukita'."

"And what happened to him?" I speak around my food. I'm half starved; I really can't eat it fast enough.

"He ate a bullet in Montreal; we almost caught her, then."

"What was she doing there?"

Another pause before he dodges the question. "Actually, we were tracking one of 'Sam Henreid's' associates."

I am stunned. "The September 11th attacks?"

"The very same. We had been tipped off as to what was happening at the Twin Towers, Henreid's takeover, although we didn't know who was responsible until we found your blog; we were working it as a secondary case. We were rather shocked to learn that the cases were connected."

"And what of Sam Henreid?"

"We thought the perpetrator had perished in the collapse of the Towers. Imagine our surprise to learn of his fate when we found your journal. We found him, still begging for change in Tribeca."

"And what did you do?"

Suki speaks up. "I coaxed him back to a hotel, and strangled him with a garrote eight weeks ago."

I put down my fork. "So that's what you people do? You murder?"

The laptop chirps. "Marcus, he sold biological weapons to religious extremists, and enslaved the minds of thousands of people. It doesn't matter that it was Delilah's power, and that she was just giving him enough rope to hang himself. Selling those weapons was a choice that he made before she ever got her hooks into him. If Delilah hadn't been watching, that terrorist group would have surely used them, and hundreds of thousands, perhaps hundreds of _millions_ of people would have died. This is probably the one case where I can say she did the world a favor, if you can call knocking down two of the world's tallest buildings and killing thousands of people a favor."

"If Kira rules the world, then she is justice," I say, referencing _Death Note._ I pick up my fork again, and resume shoveling food back into my mouth.

"Yes, well... " The Lawman pauses. "We all know how enamored you are with her, Marcus, from your writing, and that's perhaps the most disturbing trait amongst many of her victims, the adoration and devotion she programs into them. You said that there was a time when your love died; when she pushed you too far, and you stopped loving her, and it is this fact that gives me hope that your feelings are your own, that you have choices. You seem to be left largely untouched, now, the first we've ever found to be able to really talk and write about her in this kind of detail; including your writings over the last four years, we have nearly two thousand pages of information. Your journal has been extremely illuminating as to who and what she really is, and now I'm hoping that you'll come the rest of the way and tell us everything you know: her real alias, not this "Delilah Hanson" nonsense, and her whereabouts."

I put down my fork again and laugh. "So let me get this straight. You guys clean me up, buy me some clothes and a steak dinner, Suki jerks me off in the shower and you just expect me to betray the confidences of the most powerful and dangerous person in the world? You're going to have to do a lot better than that."

Suki blushes furiously, but I don't care. There is a long, long pause from the laptop before the electronic voice resumes.

"What do you want, _Mister Jones_?"

I lean forward. "First of all, if you want me to trust you, you're going to have to trust me. I want a face-to-face meeting, and then you're going to have to give me real, rock-solid assurances that you can hide me and protect me before I give you anything of real value. Then, if you're lucky, I might trust you enough to give you what you want. Until I feel safe, all you're going to get out of me is that the first name she uses may or may not be Dana, and last I heard, she lives within three hours of Minneapolis by car, with her husband and two stepchildren. I know her telephone number, email address, and street address by heart. Even her Social Security number."

Aizawa turns white. "She's raising kids? Jesus Christ..."

Ide places a hand on my shoulder. "Marc, most of _us_ have never even met Lawman face to face."

I am angry now. "I don't care! Maybe we should _all_ have a great big shindig together, in the name of cracking the case. You've only been chasing her for two decades, after all."

Another long pause. The pyramid spins and spins on the laptop screen. "I see no reason why the meeting has to be in person. This is a secure connection."

"So? For all I know, you're really Delilah and you've concocted this entire scene as some kind of fucked up loyalty test. I see your face and hear your voice or you can drop me right back at the fucking art museum." I turn to look at the other task force members. "Has it ever occurred to you that it's just her on the other end of this laptop, laughing her ass off at all of you?"

The task force members look uncomfortable. Good.

Mogi speaks. "I've asked myself that question once or twice, when we've suffered setbacks."

"That's not true. That _can't_ be true," Aizawa says.

I press on. "Because based on _Death Note_ , she sure seems to know a fuckload about all of you and L's little laptop. You even kind of look a little like your characters. Especially Watari!" I motion to the white haired British man standing silently at the other end of the room, observing the proceedings. "Do you not see the danger endemic to all of that?"

"You have to understand," says Lawman, "that these people do not even know one another's real names, Marcus. We've always gone by codenames, and they take orders from me through the laptop, by hardened, encrypted cell phone connections, or through Watari. I'm anonymous, because I _have_ to be, and I'm the only one who knows the real identities of the investigation team members. You have no idea how dangerous the people are that we fight. As for _Death Note_ , we believe that she got the limited information she has, such as the task force members' descriptions, from Ukita, before she got him to kill himself. If Ukita had known my real face, even my real voice, it likely would have all been over long ago."

"And now you want me to betray a God, your most dangerous opponent yet. You'll have to risk it all if you want to win the game, Lawman. You have my terms," I say with finality. "Take them, or leave them."

A pause, the longest one yet. I continue to eat my steak as the pyramid spins in silence.

Finally: "Alright, fine. We'll do it your way. Mogi, Ide, Matsuda, Aizawa, you're dismissed to your rooms. Marcus, I'd like you to go to your room as well while I work out the details with Watari and Suki."

I roll the room service cart into my room and close the door. I finish eating my meal as I listen to murmured voices from the other room over the drone of CNN. I watch until Candy Crowley leads the viewers in the 6PM State Prayer, then I turn the television off in disgust.

I take off my shoes, lie down, and close my eyes. I dream a dream I had many years before, when Delilah and I were still together. It was, in fact, a dream that she had programmed into me, because that is apparently something that she can do.

In it, I desperately tried to save a father and son who were being hunted by an evil mind controller. For hours, I tried to hide them, to shelter them from the relentless pursuit of others as well as their own actions. At long last, I found sanctuary for them, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"You're safe," I told them.

And they both began to laugh at me. I was confused and petrified.

"Don't you get it? You're the one really being controlled, you stupid fuck!"

I awoke with a start, Delilah in the bed next to me. I clutched at her, miserable and frightened. It was the first nightmare I'd had since I was a child.

"Tell me all about it," said Delilah.

No, I told her. I wanted it to be gone. I wanted that horrible twist ending to be purged from my mind. I held onto her, tightly.

Tonight, in my dream, I caress her and turn her over, kissing her sweetly. I know what she is. I know what she has done. It doesn't matter; I love her, and I always will. I am thrilled beyond belief to even see her again, let alone be holding her like this. I crush her to me, my embrace full of need and passion.

And in the darkness of my room at the Hyatt, my eyes open.

Suki is lying next to me, her stunning body nude in the moonlight. She has been watching me in my sleep and smiles. "I told you, I wouldn't leave your side," she says to me.

I kiss her, and I tell her about my crossword puzzle clue this morning. "We could all be her slaves, Suki. We could all just be carrying out an elaborate play right now, for her amusement. Do you realize that?"

Suki shakes her head. "I have free will, Marc. I'm lying here right now because I choose to be here with you."

I laugh weakly. "There is no free will. Free will is an illusion."

She smiles. "I could be sitting over by the window in a chair, sleeping with a gun in my hand. Do you know why I'm lying here in bed with you? Because I care about you. Because I read your journal and was touched, and horrified at the suffering you were made to endure, at the misery she heaped upon your head. We've done good things, Marc, we've helped a lot of people, but when I read your words, well, it was you I wanted to save most of all." She kisses me again.

And fuck it, I just go with it. I'm here, now, and the most beautiful woman to ever offer herself to me has her arms wrapped around me, her lips pressed passionately against my own. It doesn't matter if it's Delilah's programming or the Lawman's orders. She's here, and I avail myself of her. I pull her hand down to my growing hardness; she undoes my belt and opens my fly, reaching inside to draw me out.

My clothes quickly find their way to the floor, then she kisses her way down my belly. God, how I've needed this!

I coax her mouth off of me, then pull her back into a kiss as she climbs on top. The I slide wetly against her. "You're going to meet Lawman tomorrow, Marc. We leave in the morning," she says as she rides me, teasing me maddeningly. "Do you think you're going to help us?"

I moan with pleasure. "I... I really don't know. I'm terrified of her anger."

Her hips grind and undulate above me. "What does the tattoo on your arm say?"

My thighs rise to meet her. "It's a big Ümlaut."

Suki shakes her head as she moves above me. "No, I mean the other arm."

"Oh... 'A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys.' It's from _Bioshock_."

She slips me inside of her and we both gasp. "That's right, Marc. A man chooses, and you're still a man. You have choices. You can take the risk and help us save the world, or you can be a slave and go back to your tent city."

She rides me harder and faster, now. "Be a man, Marc... Be a man."

I howl as I reach my climax.

"My name is Atsuko," she whispers into my ear as we both pant.

We make love until dawn.

 **O-O-O**

In the morning, Suki scrubs me clean in the shower; before we leave, Lawman announces that Bruce Cohen is dead. It's all over the news, and we catch the report on CNN before everyone packs, and we take the limo to Mitchell Field, where a Lear jet awaits us.

We fly to Indianapolis, where another limousine has been rented. There is no driver; instead, Watari gets behind the wheel and drives us an hour out of town, past farms and fields to a large, yellow building.

It's a pale yellow warehouse, just like the end of _Death Note_. I begin to shake. Does no one else notice this? A yellow Porsche Boxster is parked out front.

 _The Yellow Box!_

My shaking gets worse, and I know my life has been building to this moment. I know that I am not walking away from this meeting alive. I begin to pant and moan as Suki puts a reassuring arm around me. "It's going to be okay. Really. Don't worry."

But I see my death approaching. I know why I'm here. I've fallen into another of The Killer's traps, and there's no way out, not this time.

We're all her slaves. We've been her puppets, all along. She let them save me to give me hope, just so she could take it all away again.

Again. Fucking _again_!

I begin to cry. "Why does she hate me so much?" Suki hugs me, tightly.

Watari pulls the limo alongside the building, then gets out with us. He retrieves a long, thin, sinister looking bag from the trunk, then looks me in the eye. "If your face is the first to emerge through that doorway, I'll put a bullet through it. You've been warned."

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. My lower lip trembles, and I merely close my mouth again. I feel like an animal being led to the slaughter.

He begins walking toward a nearby hillside without looking back. I watch him for a while and envision the entire hillside on fire as he walks away. We all enter the building through a door at the front.

"Come on, Marc."

A voice speaks in my head.

 _{It's time.}_

And we enter the main warehouse floor, which is deserted except for a lone figure, standing in a sunbeam at the other end of the building.

As we approach, I can see that he wears a simple plastic mask, the mask of Yagami Light.

Most of the task force takes up positions behind Lawman. Only Suki stands with me.

"So, Marcus," Lawman begins in a clipped London accent, "As you can see, I'm not your precious Delilah. You'll excuse me if I keep my face hidden until we're a little further into our discussions. If things go badly, and you've seen me, I'm afraid that my only choice would be to kill you."

And inside me, I know this voice. I've heard it before. Another If/Then statement in my head closes. "I'm afraid that discussion will have to be tabled," I say. "I am conditioned not to give you any further information, and I have a message from The Killer for The Lawman."

Aizawa gasps. "Shit. She threw him out there like a lure!"

Suki steps back and draws her Mathevre, which she levels at me.

"We're aborting," Lawman speaks into his phone.

"Acknowledged," says Watari over the link.

I hold up my hands. "Wait. You can't!"

"Watari, stand by."

Tears begin rolling down my face. "If you don't accept the message, she's going to nuke a major American city!"

The room collectively gasps. Only Lawman is unimpressed.

"Then a European capital, then an Asian capital, and around and around and around, until you pick up your message."

"Jesus... Boss!" Matsuda cries out.

"Everyone, stay calm," The Lawman says, sternly. "Okay, fine. What's the message?"

A keening cry escapes my lips. "It's not that simple. Specific conditions have to be met to unlock the message... And," I pause, "you're going to have to kill me when the message is over."

"Okay," says Suki, "we're not doing this."

"You know she can do it, L. And I'm telling you that she's _going_ to. You _have_ to do this!"

I don't know any of this. The words are just spilling from my mouth. I am petrified; what I _do_ know is that within an hour I'll be dead. I let go of my life and give myself over to fate. At last, I will be useful to Delilah, and I am grateful that I have a purpose.

"The evidence of my death is a condition required to defuse the nuclear attacks. The other condition will be revealed in the message."

"Fine," says The Lawman. "What do we need to do?"

I draw in a deep breath, my eyes still full of tears. "First, Mogi, Ide, Aizawa and Matsuda have to place their guns on the floor in front of them and step back. Then, you, I, and Suki stand in a triangle; that's your pyramid, Lawman."

At L's command, everyone carries out my instructions.

"Now, here's where things get hairy. Suki has to aim her pistol at my head. Once she does that, Lawman, you put your gun on the floor and kick it over to me."

"Wait a second-"

I shrug. "I'm not going to shoot you. I have no desire to kill anyone here. I'll keep the pistol at my side. Here are the rules, though. We have to stay in that position, with Suki aiming for my head, for thirty minutes. If she lowers her arm, I will automatically raise my weapon and kill you. Once thirty minutes have elapsed, the message will unlock, and I will deliver it."

I turn to Suki. "When the message is finished, I will raise my gun and try to kill Lawman. You have to be ready to shoot me without hesitation; if I know Delilah, she will probably have me try to do it mid-sentence, so don't let your guard down for an instant."

My attention returns to L. "So those are the rules. You'll have the drop on me, so really, you're in no danger. What do you say?"

 _{Good boy.}_

The Lawman stares at me for a long moment.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't know until we got here."

He sounds angry behind the mask. "Okay, fine, whatever."

Suki raises her automatic. L reaches into his jacket, pulls a Glock out of a shoulder holster and places it on the ground before kicking it over to me.

I pick up the gun, this alien thing in my hand. I've never seen a silencer with my own two eyes before.

 _{Turn off the safety and pull back the slide.}_

I comply. I've seen enough movies.

 _{It'll be over, soon. It'll all be over. Try to relax.}_

But I can't relax, and she knows it. If she really wanted me to relax, she'd have programmed me that way. We're all carrying out our own instructions, but I'm prevented from warning anyone of that fact.

My hand at my side, I try to make small talk. "So Lawman... Do you remember what L's name was?"

From behind his mask, The Lawman speaks. "L. Lawliet, if I'm not mistaken."

I grin sardonically. "You're not. And do you know what a Lawliet is?"

A pause. "No."

I peel a little sunburned skin from my nose with my left hand. "I read it on an urban dictionary website. It's an inside joke between two psychopathic geniuses." I chuckle weakly.

"Cute, but not funny."

"Personally, I think-"

"Marcus, I don't care what you think. You either won't or can't give me the information I need to solve this case, and you're way too enamored with a monster that's destroyed the lives of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people. I'm an atheist living in a fucking theocracy now, thanks to you and her, and frankly, I'd just as soon put a bullet in your head as look at you. The only reason you're still standing is that I don't want to see millions of people die in a series of nuclear attacks, so would you kindly shut the fuck up until you have something important to say?"

I shrug. "Fine."

 _{Ask him how his brother's chemotherapy is going.}_

"Alright, then. Here's something important: How's your brother's chemo going?"

And just like that, the mask comes off to reveal a handsome man in his fifties. His face seethes with hatred. "Go fuck yourself."

I wipe the last remnants of my tears from my cheeks and eyes. "I'm a little fucked out right now. I guess I have you to thank for that. Sorry it didn't work out for you."

But the Lawman says nothing. Suki purses her lips, her arm trembling.

The minutes tick by, Mogi calling out the time every few minutes. I am no longer crying; I am no longer afraid. I can feel the program moving and writhing within my mind, Delilah's voice soothing me, for reasons I can't even begin to fathom. I let it go. My life is over and I let it all go...

A sweat breaks out on Suki's face. Her arm is shaking, badly. Mogi calls out 29 minutes. In a short while, I will be killed by the last woman I'll ever sleep with. I guess that's fitting.

Minute 30.

And just like that, everything changes. I know why I am really here. I know what is really happening.

I am transported with joy at the revelation.

A smile on my lips, I open my mouth, and recite a fractured limerick:

"There once was a Lawman named 'L'  
"Whose case wasn't going so well  
"'Till he chanced on a man  
"Who just couldn't tan..."

My voice trails off.

I know that I have a choice; how the poem ends is up to me. I raise the gun and point it at Lawman.

Suki screams, but does not fire. The rest of the task force gasps. No one moves, because no one _can_ move anything but their heads.

"What the fuck!" Matsuda cries out.

I lower the gun, then walk up to Suki and press my forehead to the barrel of her automatic.

"Come on, Atsuko... Kill me. Pull the trigger."

Her face twists into a mask of exertion. Nothing happens.

"So much for your so-called free will. Put your arm down."

She complies with my directive.

I turn to the real L.

"Lawrence Littleton, aka 'Lawman', aka 'L'. Age 54. Drone number 1,789,548,227. Date of assimilation: November 18th, 2001."

Littleton looks horrified.

"Don't you all get it? She's made you chase your own tails for fifteen fucking _years_! And what did you honestly think you could do to stop her? You're seven people strong, while she controls over seven BILLION people now!"

"Cut off the head of the beast..." offers Mogi simply.

"And what? The monster will die? The system is meant to outlive her. That means it's self-sustaining. And what happens in a beehive when the queen dies? They _make another queen_. They have her genome, now. The technology to reproduce her is at most a decade away, assuming the Workers put the minds of the scientific community to it. You were all on a fool's errand, and way out of your league. How were you going to undo the damage? Her very first target was the hypnotherapy industry, leaving no one capable of detecting or undoing her programming!"

"Jesus," Aizawa hangs his head. It's the most anyone can move.

"You stood against her, and why?"

"We stand against the darkness," Littleton says defiantly.

"A bit glib, and completely wrong. You stood against her because you believed you were morally superior to her, when all you were doing was defending a rotten world, and a sick, twisted order. She has a plan, and the ends justify the means."

"No they don't!" Everyone but Matsuda speaks in unison.

"No? I know you all, now. I know your secrets. You've all killed in the name of the greater good. You were willing to kill an innocent, me, to save a city from a nuclear attack."

"That's different," says Littleton.

"No, it's not. The difference is merely a matter of scale. The fact that she forced the decision upon you is completely irrelevant. You tell yourself that you're better, but you're really not."

"There's nothing innocent about you," Littleton spits at my feet.

I shrug, again. "No, I suppose not. Seduced by evil and all that. She's had my heart since I realized the scope and breadth of her power in 2008, when she allowed me to remember that much. I begged her to make me her disciple that night. She played dumb; she's really good at that, but the truth is, that's precisely what she wants, and I've been destined- we've _all_ been destined to stand in this room for thirteen years. Think about what that means."

"It means you're sick," says Aizawa.

"You brainwashed idiot," says Mogi.

"Marc, please don't do this," says Suki with a heartbroken expression on her face.

I press on, undeterred. "Outside of this room, this world is changing, changing forever. She has finally achieved totality, and controls everyone six years old and older. Overnight, a shining utopia will be born, and _Homo Perfectus_ , Perfected Man, will endure until the end of the universe, and beyond. That is her legacy."

I step to Mogi. "Unfortunately, you won't live to see it." I pause. "I've never killed anyone before, and for what it's worth, it's not personal."

I press the end of the silencer between his eyes. I can do this. I can do anything for her. I pull the trigger.

And then there were five.

The reaction in the room is immediate, as everyone begins to pant in fear. I walk the four steps to Ide.

"You left the task force for a year over a disagreement with L," I say. "You got out; you should have stayed out. She would have let you go."

I don't give him the luxury of a response before killing him.

Next is Aizawa. "I know you have a family; they won't be punished for what you've done. In fact, you have my word that they'll be taken care of. I promise." The moment is devastating between us. I don't want to take this man away from his children, but I raise the gun and that's exactly what I do.

Next, I pick up the mask of Yagami Light, and approach Matsuda. "You're different, Matsu. With Ukita- Keith Sudekis- drained of every last secret he had, he was to be sent back to subjugate the team, but his subconscious mind, knowing he'd been compromised, persuaded him to kill himself. Failing that, The Workers knew that you were one of the perfect candidates for infiltration.

"At The Killer's order, you and a hundred thousand others like you were conditioned for this mission, but you were the one chosen. It was you who subjugated the task force, including Watari, and it was Watari who got to L two months later, when next they saw one another." I pause. "What happens here," I continue, "is my choice. And my choice is to give _you_ a choice, Matsuda. I know you've admired her. I know you've seen the promise and potential of her power, and I'm here to say that she's cast off the mask of The Killer forever; there is only The Übermensch, now. I'm offering you a seat at the table where the future of mankind is charted, if you want it, as repayment for removing the only legitimate threat that The Killer ever faced."

I slip on the mask, and turn my back to him. "You may move, Matsu." I close my eyes. I hear the scrape of plastic against concrete and imagine him leveling his gun at me and firing over and over again, but nothing happens. After several long seconds I turn back around. The gun is in his hand, and his hand is at his side.

He shrugs, and tucks his pistol into its shoulder holster. "If Kira rules the world, then she is justice," he says. "My name is Henry Attis."

I take off the mask to reveal a smile on my face. A relieved smile. I toss the mask aside, as the Übermensch has cast all her masks aside. "I know. Please, wait for me in the front office."

Henry leaves, his shoes clacking against the concrete.

And then there were two.

Suki whimpers, expecting to be next, but I turn my attention to the real L, instead. "Lawrence Littleton. I'm not here to debate you; there is no point in further discussion. I'll merely ask if you have any last words."

L's face is full of hatred. "To sin is a human business. To justify sins is a devilish business."

 _{Tolstoy, huh?}_

"Tolstoy, huh? Well, L, after today, there will be no such thing as sin, but I'll be sure to pass along your message." I raise my gun and spray the world's second most brilliant mind across the floor like so much Bolognese and bone.

I sigh. Suki is crying. This has been hard for me, and this is going to be the hardest part yet.

"Atsuko Takahata, aged 42. L's assassin. Trained in Ninjutsu and advanced electronic surveillance. Infiltration expert. Your specialty is getting any target to trust you, no matter what it takes. The Killer hates you more than anyone else in this room."

She chokes back a cry. Tears begin rolling down her cheeks. "Marc, _please_. I _love_ you. I have money; we can run away together and hide from her."

I smile, sadly. "On any other day, I'd say you were merely lying, and the truth is, you don't, or wouldn't love me, left to your own devices. She's only made you believe you love me."

"It doesn't matter! It feels real to _me_!"

"And now you've made the point that I've been trying to make for years and years; it _doesn't_ matter. She made you love me because she wanted you to experience real love, then the horror of contemplating the prospect of being forced to end the life of the man you loved, and finally, the sting of betrayal at the realization that that same man was going to end _your_ life."

Atsuko has a horrified expression on her face. I continue.

"If it's any consolation, she wanted to ensure that this would hurt me, as well. You gave me hope. You were nurturing and kind. You made me feel things I never thought I would ever feel again. And finally, you're carrying my child."

She gapes.

"Or you will be, anyway, if I let you live. Three days ago, you started taking massive doses of _Clomifene_ , enough to ensure ovulation. In killing you, I kill my own child." I let L's pistol clatter to the floor and take the gun from Suki's paralyzed hand.

"You have a choice, Marc."

 _{You're right. I do have a choice...}_

But I don't. Not really. We are just _dramatis personae_ , reciting our lines in a theater that has no audience.

"You're right. I _do_ have a choice. And my choice has never been clearer. Goodbye, Suki."

I raise my gun again, and my hand is full of thunder. Suki, Atsuko, slides dead to the floor, and I kneel next to the body, weeping. You see, Delilah didn't just make Suki love me... What I never said, what I was never allowed to say, was that she had made me love Suki back.

"Boss?" Watari queries on the push-to-talk. "Boss? You there?"

I cry and rage and howl in pain. The suffering of the last thirteen years pours out of me like black bile. I kiss her lips and envision a life with Suki, raising our child together. I loved this woman, and I had murdered her.

 _{This is what I feel...}_

This is what The Killer feels beneath her mask, I think in sudden realization. This is the pain she felt every time she took a life. And with her Godlike, perfect mind, she never forgets a single detail of those killings, not for one instant.

Watari tries to call each of the task force members in turn.

I do not move, still crying over Suki's corpse.

Then, all the phones chirp at once. "I'm coming in there, Jones," they say in unison. "I'm coming in there, and I'm going to skin you alive."

I clutch Suki's pistol to my chest in fear, but I suddenly stop crying and raise my head. I hear the sound of approaching helicopters.

Wiping the tears from my face, I make my way to the front office to join Henry.

We both look out one of the windows of the warehouse offices and down the road. Two large black FBI trucks make their way toward the warehouse, escorted by two Apaches, which take up a position in front of the building and begin a search pattern along the ridgeline, looking for snipers.

There is the sound of minigun fire from over the deafening sound of the Apaches. Strike teams pour out of the backs of the trucks, each bearing what appears to be an M-16. They knock in the door and swarm into the room. Henry and I both raise our hands, instinctively. The majority of the strike team continues on into the main warehouse.

One of the men that stays behind gets on the radio. "Office clear. We have the package, and Attis."

Outside there is an explosion, as a golden glow fills the room. Through the window, the entire ridgeline is on fire. The hill facing the warehouse is in flames.

 _{Napalm,}_ I think to myself in wonder at the sight.

Goodbye, Watari.

 **O-O-O**

Escorted by the strike teams and helicopters, I drive L's yellow Boxster the hour back to Indianapolis International Airport with Henry Attis seated next to me.

We do not speak. Instead, I turn on the satellite radio and find a news channel. The stock market is up over fifteen hundred points. President Armitage has dissolved the Covenant and resigned in disgrace after being found naked with an eight year old boy. A new constitution will be drafted, beginning this afternoon.

The Taliban has renounced its principles and called for free, democratic elections in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are pulling out of Kashmir after declaring a unilateral cease-fire.

Every member of the Cali Cartel has surrendered themselves to authorities and confessed to a laundry list of crimes.

Cuba, North Korea, and China have declared an end to Communism.

The Pope has publicly renounced his faith and urged his followers to believe only in that which can be rationally explained, that which is real and can be proven.

"Religion is a lie, a sickness inflicted upon the people of the world," he says through a translator, "promising hope and unity, but bringing only division and death."

"Slow news day," I joke to Henry, who laughs with incredulity.

The entire world is being turned upside down. We have to get to Washington, or we'll miss the party.

The procession is allowed onto the tarmac at IND and led inside a large hangar.

"Holy shit!" Henry exclaims as we pull to a stop. Even I am stunned as we exit the vehicle.

Before us is Air Force One, all blue and white and majestic.

"Looks like we'll be riding in style, Matsu."

A voice speaks in my head.

{You've done well, and I'm so very, very proud of you. It's time for you to come home.}

 **O-O-O**

I am sitting at the President's desk aboard his flying command center.

Henry Attis, Matsuda, my companion, sips a cocktail and watches CNN. For the first time in over three years, they do not broadcast the Noon Prayer. The theocracy that treated non-Christians as second class citizens in this country is being swept away.

I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, sipping my own drink.

In my mind, Delilah takes me back, back, illuminating secrets long buried.

I am ten years old, and I am standing in a darkened bedroom. Before me is a little girl, my best friend's sister, and I have torn her diaper open so that I, in my curiosity, can get a good look at a female's genitalia for the first time.

I am contemplating doing something to this child, something unforgivable, but a stern voice speaks in my mind.

"Oh, Marc," it says. "What the fuck are you doing? This is the most fucked up thing you've ever done!"

I am a disturbed child. I am out of control, but on this occasion, a tug of war ensues inside my mind.

"No, Marc," says the voice in my head. "I let you have your little look, now turn around and _walk away_."

I stand, expressionless in the dark. The only sound is my own breathing.

"Marc, you _can't_ do this. You're about to hurt yourself and I won't be able to help you. You have to-"

I dip my head, and a firework explodes inside my mind. The voice screams and goes silent. I blank out for a few seconds, and all the hair stands up on the back of my neck. When I come around, I am horrified by what I have done. We're all sinners, but my crime is worse than that of most "normal, civilized" people.

Later, I am back downstairs with my friend Michael, and he and I sit in darkness while he plays Pole Position on the Atari computer I've brought over. As I sit, watching, I feel profoundly disquieted. Something is wrong with me. I feel as though something is seriously, _seriously_ wrong with me. It's not just that I feel incredibly shocked and horrified by what I have done, there is a part of me that feels as though it is missing. "I am broken," I think. "I've finally gone and broken myself." I have the barest whiff of a concept, on the periphery of my consciousness, that my Voice is gone, something that has always been with me. For some reason, I imagine as though I am sitting in a small boat, plunging my hands into the inky black water in an attempt to find a drowning man that has slipped beneath the surface. I imagine dragging this person out of the water over and over again, as though my will alone could undo the damage that had been done to me. As though I could bring the Voice back.

Whether my mental exercise had any effect, I cannot say, but some time later, there is a screaming in my mind. My Voice returns, livid.

 _{Oh, it hurts! I thought I'd die! Why didn't I die?}_

And: _{You fucking idiot! You tried to kill me! And after everything I've done for you!}_

In the darkness, my face lit only by the television screen, my mouth curls into a slight grin. My Voice was back. I am not even consciously aware of why, but relief washes over me. Then my eyes cut over to the entrance to the dining room. _{Get in there. NOW!}_

I casually get to my feet and stroll into the dining room, which is lit only by a ceiling light from the hallway. I stand in semidarkness. I think to myself: "My behavior is out of control, so I'm going to pretend that there's someone inside of me that can help me, and that person is going to talk to me now." Now, this part I always remembered, even though I tried never to think about what I had done. I just never understood the importance of what was happening to me; in my mind, it was a fake. Just me pretending to be someone else to scold myself. My mouth moves in the semidarkness, and I gesticulate wildly as I speak, but no sound escapes my lips. "What the fuck did you _do_? How _dare_ you! Do you know what that _makes you_? Is that what you really want to _be_? Well I won't let you." I explain to myself that, "You're going to do everything I tell you to do from now on, and if you don't, you won't have to worry about killing me again, because I'll kill us _both_!

You'll wake up in a bathtub filled with your blood, wondering how you got there. And you'll cry out for help, but the only one there to comfort you will be ME!"

"And I… won't… help you."

I go on to say that I would not be allowed to ever have children, for obvious reasons. That meant that getting married was probably out, too. "And honestly Marc, I think even you knew that you were never going to have a happy life, but things are going to be a lot worse for both of us now, because after this, I can't even let you have friends anymore. You do things. Things I can't understand or predict." "I would fix you if I could, but the truth is, it's such a fucking mess in there that I don't even know where to begin. I want to fix you so much, but I can't. And that really sucks, because when you're unhappy, I'm unhappy. But I have to do the thinking for both of us now, because you obviously won't do it. And nobody else can help you, because you hide too well. No one understands how sick you truly are, no one but me."

"So I will save you from yourself."

"I will save you from yourself."

"I will save you from yourself."

I chanted this mantra for a while, picking up speed and intensity, a smile coming to my lips. There was something out there that could help me, and I knew that I would never again commit an atrocity of the magnitude of my actions that night. I knew it was all a game of pretend, but there was a part of me that truly felt that there was someone in my head who could help me not give in to the derangement that caused me to act out and do things like this.

And I was happy not to be alone.

According to Delilah, that voice in my head, the voice of my subconscious, should have died within me that night. It never should have returned. And the monstrous thing that was to grow up in its place would be dark and sinister. This is how serial killers are born. This is how sociopaths are created. This is why so many truly dangerous people have a history of atrocities like animal torture and animal murder in their childhoods. They drown their inner children with their actions, and become monsters. Malignant inflictors. The evidence of that trauma is etched in their eyes, somehow. This is how she found me. One of her drones identified me in a shopping mall well over a decade ago, and she came looking for me some days or weeks later.

I was not a drone, so when I opened my front door on that fateful night, she had to hypnotize me the old fashioned way, subduing me in seconds using the Handshake Induction Method. A short while later, with both of us sitting at my dining room table, she interrogated me, expecting to find a serial killer, someone to put down like a rabid dog, and instead found a miracle.

The subconscious mind, she learned, isn't just a part of us, it is a separate life form, with its own consciousness and self awareness. It communes with us, telepathically, aware of our every thought. We only hear what it speaks to us, and then, usually, only as a one hears a dog whistle: just on the periphery of our consciousness. What it really thinks, who it really is inside of us, remains a mystery. We are, each of us, not a single entity. We are two, a binary being.

She opened my mind, confused as to why my subconscious was still intact and whole, and from my mouth, a secret of the universe came spilling out.

The plane touches down. Henry and I disembark and are led to Marine One, the transport helicopter that is to take us to our final destination.

Up until that point, The Übermensch had been merely using the mask of The Killer to dispense justice while she waited for her hypnotic virus to spread. She was waiting for this very day, when she had everyone under her control.

And when totality was achieved, she had intended to destroy all of humanity to the very last man, beginning with herself.

The prophesied Übermensch was supposed to be perfect in every way, but she would never reach her fullest potential, because she had been raped as a child. She was damaged forever, beyond all hope of repair. Three hundred pound girls aren't born... They're _made_.

So she plotted the end of mankind out of rage and pain and bitterness; damn us and all our horrible secrets. She could save the world, as was her prophesied destiny, but mankind's savage nature had butchered her in her child's bed, and she would be sure to return the favor. The night she found me, she discovered to her shock and amazement that she wasn't just plotting one genocide, she was plotting _two_ , and those Others inside of us all hadn't done a thing to earn her wrath.

She had intended to kill all the inflictors, and all the victims, and make the surviors forget they ever existed. The Virus would die, but all of mankind would know in their subconscious minds the atrocity inflicted upon them, and be infected by a new Virus. For a short time, the world would be peaceful and perfect, but the Virus would attempt to spread, and mankind would fall upon each other like a pack of wolves; civilization would fall, never to rise again.

So she changed her mind, on the spot. Still, she reasoned that one does not plot the extinction of an entire civilization and then turn around and get to be its messiah. She had forfeited her destiny, and she knew it.

And as I see the White House from the air through the port windows, I know the truth: My actions that fateful night all those decades ago, as despicable and unforgivable as they were, saved the world. She made me the true messiah. An unlikely messiah, but a messiah nonetheless.

I press my fingers to the cool glass and watch as the White House looms larger and larger in my vision. I feel the weight of history upon my shoulders. The helicopter lands on the White House lawn.

We are escorted from the door of Marine One, and inside the building. Shortly afterward, we stand in the office of the President's secretary.

I tell Henry that this is as far as he can go. I have to cross the finish line alone.

 _{Come to me.}_

 **O-O-O**

I'm not a Drone.

I open the door, and step inside the Oval Office. Behind the desk is a new flag, one that is rising this day over every city on the planet.

I'm not a Worker.

In front of it, behind the desk, stands not Delilah Hanson, not The Killer, but at long last, The Übermensch herself.

I sure as shit ain't the fucking Queen.

On her leg, I know, is a tattoo of a skeletal dragon, one that I purchased for her in 2005. On her left hand, between her thumb and forefinger, is the outline of a black heart. On her right breast is a tattoo of a chameleon. Finally, on the side of her throat, still raw, is a tattoo of a queen bee.

On the corner of the desk sits a reproduction of Rodin's sculpture, "The Gates of Hell."

I am set apart. I am different. I am the last unperfected human on planet earth.

By this time tomorrow, every prisoner in the world will be set free, given a blanket pardon issued from this office. No man or woman will be capable of ever harming another, not ever again; it won't matter what anyone has done before this day, all that will matter is what they made of their lives afterward.

Their cells will instead become free dorm rooms, where they will be allowed to stay until they find other arrangements on the outside. Until then, they will be allowed to come and go as they please.

She made me suffer for all those years, just so this moment would be all the sweeter when she finally took my pain away. She made me feel the weight of responsibility for an entire civilization, just to prepare me for the task ahead.

She is the master of the world, and every master needs a pet.

I am her personal slave.

On the surface, that sounds like a bad gig, but guess who I get to wake up next to every morning for the rest of my life?

By this time tomorrow, every man, woman and child on earth will have felt more happiness than anyone deserves to feel in a lifetime. They'll have to. It's already been arranged.

And she broke the world, just so that I, like a child with a jigsaw puzzle, could have the pleasure of putting it all back together again. My way. With her power, I am limited only by my imagination, deciding not only the politics and the economics, but the very nature of humanity. I will tweak human potential at my whim, in order to create a future based on my ideals. I will prune back the more savage aspects of human nature like a tree surgeon.

Because now that humanity is united, and human nature can be redefined, an ideal can at last be achieved.

By this time tomorrow, every government on earth will have dissolved, calling instead for free elections and drafting new constitutions to favor an egalitarian democratic ideal based on virtually unlimited freedom and the right to happiness, all under the umbrella of a new global government. My government.

Sitting in a chair next to her is a man holding a tattoo gun. He pours black ink into a tiny plastic cup.

By this time tomorrow, the women of the Muslim world will be burning their burkas and their copies of the Koran in the streets. No man will be allowed to run for public office in these countries for the next 1000 years.

Eventually, every religious organization on the planet will close forever. Every military in the world will set about the years-long task of disbanding.

But there's a price with this woman. There's always a fucking price. I love the job, but I hate the title.

By this time tomorrow, hundreds of millions of people will be back at work, busily laboring at building the infrastructure for an array of orbital elevators on every continent on earth; each massive tower will stretch hundreds of miles into the sky. Thousands of factories and manufacturing plants have been built in secret, just for this day. Now that mankind is worth preserving, it is time at long last for us to go to the stars.

I sink to my knees in worship. "I love you, Rosemary," I say. My cheeks are wet.

By this time tomorrow, the tent cities will have already begun to empty, as hundreds of millions of privileged people around the world welcome destitute families into their homes and hearts. The Great Healing is about to begin, and with it, an age of wonder and miracles that the world will talk about for millions of years. With me as humanity's loving dictator and gentle guide, like Yagami Light, borrowing the power of a living God to achieve... Well, you'll see.

Getting a tattoo on my forehead is going to fucking _hurt_ , though. All that flimsy skin against hard bone...

The Übermensch pulls out the chair for me and smiles. Her eyes are bright and full of whimsy.

"I love you, too."

My name is Marcus Lee Jones.

I am 45 years old.

I am about to become The Antichrist.

And for the first time in my life, I am completely happy.

 **The End**

"Nobody has a choice," Jones said, suddenly stern and thoughtful. "Not me or you - nobody. We're all chained up like cattle. Like slaves."

Philip K. Dick - The World Jones Made

 **(Author's Note: And there you have it, the completed edition of Tales of the Ubermensch: The Series. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I know it's dark, but it *is* a Horror/Crime fic, after all. I have an idea for my next TotU story, called "Tales of the Ubermensch: The Sorceress's Apprentice", but I feel like I've had enough of dark for a little while, so I think I'm going to stick with some other fandoms for a little while. My stories on my radar include "Firefly: Fry Cook Opportunity", "Firefly: Deleted Scenes", and "The Player of Games: Royal Fizzbin", a Culture Novels/Star Trek Crossover. Please consider reading them, if you liked this fic. I promise they won't be dark and shocking the way this one was. Also, if you want to see more of my contributions to FF dot Net, read DenZatz's "RWBY: Ghosts of the Past", Volumes 1 and 2 (with more to follow). I edit, plot, and aid in characterization and outlining with DenZatz in what was turned into a true collaboration after editing the first completed volume. And, as always, I love to hear from fans and critics alike, so feel free to PM me as soon as you like. I'd love to talk.)**


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